.WTZ8 


GOD'S   RESCUES. 


GOD'S   RESCUES; 


OR, 


THE  LOST  SHEEP,  THE  LOST  COIN, 
AND  THE  LOST  SON. 


three;  discourses 

ON 

LUKE   XV. 


By  WILLIAM  R.    WILLIAMS. 


NEW  YORK: 

ANSON    D.   F.    RANDOLPH   &   CO., 

770  Broadway,  cor.  9th  Street. 

1871. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1871,  by 

ANSON  D.  P.   RANDOLPH   &   CO., 

In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress  at  Washington. 


E.O.JENKINS.  ROBERT     RUTTER, 

STEREOTYPER    AND    PRINTER,  BINDER, 

20    N.  WILLIAM  ST.,  N.  Y.  84    beekman    STREET. 


THE    LOST    SHEEP. 


Then  drew  near  unto  him  all  the  publicans  and  sin- 
neks  roK  TO  heas  him. 

And  the  Pharisees  asd  scribes  murmured,  sating, 
This  man  receiveth  sinners,  and  eateth  with  them. 

And  he  spake  this  parable  unto  them,  sating, 

What  man  of  tou,  having  an  hundred  sheep,  if  he 
lose  one  of  them,  doth  not  leave  the  ninett  and  nine 
in  the  wilderness,  and  go  after  that  which  is  lost 
until  he  find  it  ? 

And  when  he  hath  found  it,  he  lateth  it  on  his 
shoulders  rejoicing. 

And  when  he  cometh  home,  he  calleth  together  his 

FRIENDS  AND  NEIGHBOURS,  SATING  UNTO  THEM,  ReJOICE  WITH 
me  ';    FOR  I  HAVE  FOUND  MT  SHEEP  WHICH  WAS  LOST. 

I  SAT  UNTO  TOU,  ThAT  LIKEWISE  JOT  SHALL  BE  IN  HEAV- 
EN OVER  ONE  SINNER  THAT  REPENTETH,  MORE  THAN  OVER 
NINETT  AND  NINE  JUST  PERSONS,  WHICH  NEED  NO  REPENT- 
ANCE. — Luke,  cJiap.  xv.  1-7. 

IN  those  catacombs  at  Rome,  where  the 
early  Christians  sheltered  themselves 
from  their  Pagan  persecutors,  one  of  the 
favorite  portrayals  is  that  which  presents 
the  Saviour  in  the  imagery  of  this  parable. 
A  shepherd  is  seen  bearing  a  lamb  flung 
across  his  shoulders.  In  the  pictures  and 
r=^-  (5) 


6  THE   LOST   SHEEP. 

coins  of  old  Christian  art,  it  is  a  frequent 
representation.  One  delineation,  in  these 
dark  subterranean  galleries,  is  supposed  to 
be  fifteen  centuries  old.  It  shows  how,  in 
days  all  saddened  by  recent  bereavement 
and  by  impending  martyrdom,  the  early 
confessors  of  the  faith  solaced  themselves 
for  the  dark  yesterday  or  darker  to-mor- 
row, by  remembering  the  self-sacrificing 
tenderness,  and  the  infinite  carefulness,  and 
the  untiring  might,  and  the  illimitable  re- 
sources, of  the  great  Gcfd,  their  Redeemer 
and  their  Elder  Brother — "  The  Chief  Shep- 
herd and  Bishop  of  their  souls" — as  He  is 
elsewhere  called.  That  name,  "  Bishop," 
blends  the  images  of  the  Overseer,  the 
Guardian,  the  Rescuer,  and  the  Avenger^ 

How  touchingly  is  it  introduced  in  the 
narrative  of  the  Gospel.  The  Pharisees 
murmured — reputable  and  exemplary  men 
as  they  deemed  themselves — that  one,  claim- 
ing to  be  the  Messiah,  should  be  so  accessi- 
ble to  the  disreputable  and  the  outcast. 
"  This   man    receiveth   sinners  and   eateth 


THE   LOST   SHEEP.  / 

with  them."  Their  own  idea  of  sanctity 
was,  that  it  shunned  the  contact  of  such 
guilty  and  abject  souls.  For  a  John  the 
Baptist,  living  sternly  alone  in  the  desert, 
far  from  the  ordinary  resorts  and  the  every- 
day entanglements  of  society,  the  Pharisees 
might  have  some  cold  and  distant  respect. 
He  might  seem  to  them  as  shunning  to  be 
brushed  by  the  world's  ordinary  throng  of 
sinners,  sacred  in  his  reserve,  and  saintly 
in  the  very  fact  of  his  utter  isolation. 

But  that  the  Baptist's  Master  should  ac- 
cept, from  Zaccheus  the  publican,  an  invita- 
tion to  dine  beneath  his  roof — should  enrol 
Matthew,  another  of  that  hated  class,  the 
tax  -  gatherer,  the  publican,  among  his 
Apostles  ;  and  should  even  permit  a  woman, 
that  had  been  once  notoriously  a  sinner,  to 
bedew  His  feet  with  her  tears,  and  wipe  off 
the  fast-flowing  drops  with  her  thick  tress- 
es, was  in  their  view  unbeseeming  the  dig- 
nity of  His  character  and  hardly  to  be 
reconciled  with  the  sanctity  of  His  mission. 

Our  Lord  replies,  by  a  matchless  train  of 


8  THE   LOST   SHEEP. 

parables.  The  first,  that  of  the  Lost  Sheep ; 
the  second,  that  of  the  Lost  Coin  ;  and  the 
last,  that  of  the  Lost  Son  ;  each  bringing 
forward  some  new  trait  of  anxiety  for  the 
souls  ready  to  perish,  and  shedding,  from 
some  new  point,  another  beam  of  hope  on 
the  path  of  the  penitent. 

The  first  parable  presents  the  great  doc- 
trine of  the  Atonement,  and  the  work  of 
God  the  Son,  as  the  Redeemer.  It  is  a  con- 
densation of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews : 
Christ  shown  in  His  sacrifice  and  priestly 
intercession.  The  second  parable  brings 
out  the  lessons  of  the  Gospel  of  John — the 
work  of  God  the  Holy  Spirit,  who  convicts 
that  He  may  convert,  and  disturbs,  that 
He  may  comfort ;  like  the  besom  sweeping 
off  the  dust,  that  has  gathered  in  the  heart 
and  conscience,  and  upon  the  Bible  and  on 
the  Book  of  Providence,  and  making  all 
the  soul  for  the  time  confused  and  discord- 
ant, and,  as  it  may  seem,  even  chaotic.  But 
by  the  lamp,  enlightening  as  well  as  con- 
founding ;  searching  out  truths  once  dispar- 


THE   LOST   SHEEP.  9 

aged  and  neglected,  and  finding  clues  once 
utterly  lost,  and  bringing  to  view  treasures 
before  unsuspected.  So  this  parable  brings 
out  the  great  truths  of  Conversion  and 
Regeneration.  The  last  or  third  delinea- 
tion, presents  the  great  truths  of  Effec- 
tual Calling  and  Adoption  and  Justification, 
the  lessons  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans. 
These  are  eminently  the  work  of  God  the 
Father.  Thus  the  three  graphic  sketches  to- 
gether blend  the  work  of  the  Divine  Trin- 
ity ;  and  bring  out  the  Full  Godhead  em- 
bodied in  the  work  of  human  recovery. 

As  these  similitudes  go  on,  the  appeal 
comes  seemingly  closer  and  closer  home  to 
the  daily  experience  of  His  hearers,  to  their 
"  business  and  bosoms."  The  husbandman 
hears  of  flocks ;  the  housewife  of  besoms 
and  lamps  ;  and  in  the  last  parable,  that  of 
the  returned  prodigal,  what  an  effectual 
knocking  is  there  at  the  door  of  every  hu- 
man, and  especially  of  every  parental  heart. 
It  is  God's  statement  of  God's  regard  for 
the  sinner,  and  of  the  high   interest  that 


lO  THE   LOST   SHEEP. 

Heaven,  though  stainless  and  happy,  has, 
through  all  its  angelic  ranks,  in  the  work 
of  the  Lord  of  Angels  to  recover  the  es- 
trayed,  to  win  back  the  alienated,  and  to 
rescue  the  self-destroyed  from  the  edge  of 
the  ruin  to  which  they  are  rolling  and 
plunging,  with  a  fearful  acceleration  and 
desperate  pertinacity. 

Let  us  dwell  on  the  first  of  these  illustra- 
tions, Christ,  the  Good  Shepherd.  The 
feeling,  which  led  the  Scribes  to  their  im- 
peachment of  our  Lord's  conduct  toward 
sinners,  is  not  yet  died  out.  Men,  who 
would  scorn,  as  most  unjust,  all  comparison 
of  themselves  with  the  old  Pharisees,  are 
yet,  after  the  interval  of  so  many  centuries, 
repeating  in  our  times  and  beside  our  sanc- 
tuaries, the  old  cavil.  Are  the  doctrines  of 
grace  earnestly  and  freely  pressed  on  all 
mankind  ?  Is  it  said  from  the  pulpit  and 
the  press,  that  salvation  has,  by  the  death 
of  Christ,  been  purchased  for  the  vilest, 
and  that  men  may,  turning  from  themselves 
and  accepting   His  grace  and  yoke,  be  at 


THE   LOST   SHEEP.  II 

once  and  altogether  pardoned,  and  be  per- 
fectly and  forever  justified  ?  How  many 
censure  this  as  preaching  impunity  to  sin, 
and  as  bidding  a  perilous  welcome  to  the 
world's  veriest  outcasts  and  reprobates.  It 
is  said  to  be  a  degradation  of  religion,  and 
a  wrong  done  to  the  moral  and  exemplary, 
to  represent  this  as  the  mode  of  man's  access 
to  God  ;  and  to  paint  the  way  to  Heaven,  as 
being  thus,  only  by  the  Righteousness  of 
Another,  and  by  the  blood  of  His  one  great 
propitiatory  sacrifice. 

"  Is  it  thus  with  Christ  that  He  receiv- 
eth  sinners  ?"  exclaim  they.  Or,  does  the 
Christian  church  send  forth  her  chosen  sons 
and  daughters,  and  call  for  the  gifts  and 
prayers  of  her  membership,  to  evangelize  the 
degraded  ;  and  to  recognize  humanit}^  in  the 
brutified,  who  are  dwelling,  perhaps,  on  some 
barbarian  and  remote  coast,  and  in  savage, 
squahd  guise,  tenanting  some  cannibal  isle  ? 
Is  it  not,  even  yet,  too  common  to  hear, 
against  such  enterprise,  the  cavil,  and  from 
some,   the    fierce    taunt,   and   the   flippant 


12  THE    LOST   SHEEP. 

sneer,  at  this  anxiety  for  such  remote,  and 
such  uncouth,  and  such  unpromising  speci- 
mens of  the  human  family  ?  Why,  it  is 
asked,  should  your  Christianity  go  so  far ; 
and  busy  itself  with  such  repulsive  Pagan- 
ism, ignorant  of  the  first  principles  of  let- 
ters, and  arts  and  laws,  touching  nearly  the 
line  of  kinship  to  the  beast  ?  And  yet,  in 
all  this,  does  not  the  church  of  our  times 
tread  in  the  steps  of  that  Good  Shepherd, 
who  went  much  further,  and  renounced 
much  more ;  who,  leaving  the  ninety  and 
nine,  is  seen  to  go  in  quest  of  the  one  es- 
trayed  and  perishing,  dear  to  Him,  in  its 
very  destitution,  misery  and  peril  ?  Does 
not  His  love  need  access  to  the  misery,  be- 
cause the  misery  so  sorely  needs  that  love  ? 
So  in  the  revelations  of  Modern  Science, 
as  to  the  extent  of  the  celestial  system, 
when  worlds,  more  massive  than  our  own, 
are  seen  peopling  by  myriads,  the  depths 
of  space,  and  the  mind  begins  to  reel  under 
the  contemplation  of  the  hosts  of  orbs,  that 
God    has   formed,   and    of   the    intelligent 


THE   LOST   SHEEP.  1 3 

beings  that  possibly  may  tenant  them,  the 
conclusion  has  been  drawn,  Why  should  we 
think,  that  to  our  little  paltry  globe,  a  nar- 
row nook  in  the  vast  realm  of  being,  and 
that  to  our  ephemeral  race,  so  insignificant 
and  morally  so  unworthy  of  special  regard 
from  God,  there  should  be  sent  an  Incarna- 
tion of  the  Creator  and  a  Revelation  of  the 
God  who  made  all  this  teeming  universe  ? 
Is  not  this  sending  far,  and  overlooking 
much  that  was  more  worthy  of  notice  else- 
where, for  God  to  come  down  and  taber- 
nacle on  our  planet,  and  in  our  mortal,  suf- 
fering nature?  Why  expect  the  Infinite 
One  to  seek  this  tiny  spangle  of  a  globe, 
and  here  to  visit  and  to  receive  such  for- 
lorn sinners  ? 

Yes — in  the  cavils  against  the  doctrines  of 
grace — in  the  pleadings  against  modern  mis- 
sions to  the  heathen — in  some  of  the  popu- 
lar objections  from  the  extent  of  the  uni- 
verse, against  the  worthiness  of  our  planet 
and  of  our  race  to  receive  an  embassage 
from  the  Incarnate  God — we  see  but  the  old 


14  THE   LOST   SHEEP. 

Pharisaic  accusation,  restated  with  some 
new  phraseology.  But  the  core  of  the  ob- 
jection is  the  same.  You  make  God  stoop 
too  low  ;  and  let  man,  the  petty,  the  guilty, 
and  the  perishable,  presume  on  hopes  that 
are  preposterously  too  large  and  too  lofty. 

II.  See,  then,  how  simply,  and  yet  over- 
whelmingly, God  replies.  The  Shepherd, 
the  Incarnate  Son,  the  Perfect  Resemblance 
and  Express  Image  of  the  Father,  and  the 
Embodiment  of  the  Infinite  Godhead,  He 
puts,  to  the  men  and  women  about  Him,  an 
appeal  coming  home  to  the  histories  of  their 
own  farms  and  pasture  grounds,  to  the  inci- 
dents of  those  very  homes  whence  they  had 
just  come  out  to  listen,  and  to  which,  when 
they  had  heard  Him  through,  they  would  be 
soon  returning.  Here  is  a  shepherd,  the 
owner  of  a  flock  of  a  hundred  sheep.  They 
had  been  feeding  in  the  wilderness.  By 
this,  we  suppose,  intended,  not  a  bleak,  deso- 
late wild ;  but  a  pasture,  like  those  unfenc- 
ed  commons  stretching  out  for  leagues,  to 
which,  in   the   old  world,  sheep  are   often 


THE   LOST   SHEEP.  1 5 

driven,  like  our  own  wide  prairies  of  the 
West.  From  his  flock,  one  sheep  is  missing. 
It  has  quitted  its  fellows.  When  they 
come  to  be  counted  at  even,  it  is  not  found. 
In  its  defencelessness  and  wilfulness  or  wit- 
lessness,  it  is  little  likely  to  return  ;  and,  if 
encountering  the  wolf  or  the  lion,  its  fate  is 
fixed.  It  can  neither  escape  by  fight  nor  by 
flight.  It  has  gone  nibbling  the  grass, 
bleating  in  its  loneliness,  and  straying  in 
its  bewilderment ;  and  now,  as  the  night 
gathers  and  the  shadows  deepen,  whither  is 
it  tending,  and  what  shall  become  of  it?" 
The  shepherd  stops  not  to  reckon,  He 
does  not  say,  It  is  but  a  small  proportion  of 
the  flock  ;  its  course  is  uncertain,  and  who 
can  tell  in  what  direction  to  seek  it  ?  I  can 
well  afford  to  lose  it.  As  for  it,  it  well  de- 
serves its  fate ;  let  it  perish.  To  go  in 
quest  of  it,  were  to  incur  certain  fatigue, 
with  very  slender  and  uncertain  prospects 
of  any  success.  Why  should  I  vex  myself, 
and  encQunter  in  mountain  passes,  a  pit, 
dark   and   deep,   that  may  engulf  me ;  or 


l6  THE   LOST   SHEEP. 

some  savage  beast  of  prey,  that  might  as- 
sail me?  But,  dashing  aside  all  such  pre- 
texts, the  shepherd,  who,  in  his  pity  cannot 
afford  that  the  poor  beast  perish,  leaves  the 
ninety  and  nine  in  the  wilderness  pastures, 
and  as  Matthew  states  it,  "  goeth  into  the 
mountains,"  where  many  a  rough  steep 
must  be  clambered,  and  many  a  precipice 
may  yawn  for  the  unguarded  foot,  and 
many  a  den  may  harbor  its  noxious  ser- 
pents, or  its  ferocious  beasts  of  prey.  Toil, 
peril,  and  •  discomfort,  are  braved.  The 
poor  waif  is  found.  And  when  found,  how 
is  it  treated  ?  Is  it  butchered  and  flayed  on 
the  spot,  and  its  skin  borne  home  to  be  nail- 
ed on  the  gate  of  the  fold,  or  the  great  barn 
door,  a  warning  to  all  the  rest  of  the  flock 
of  the  consequences  and  penalties  of  stray- 
ing ?  Is  the  crook  broken  heavily  over  its 
shoulder,  as  a  punishment  and  a  warning  to 
itself  though  its  life  is  spared  ;  a  monition 
against  future  wanderings  ?  Is  the  hot 
branding-iron  promptly  applied,  singeing 
the  fleece,  and  burning  down  its  way  into 


THE   LOST   SHEEP.  1/ 

the  quick,  quivering  flesh  of  the  poor  ani- 
mal ?  Or,  is  the  watch-dog  set  on  the  poor 
silly  sheep  to  flesh  his  white  tooth  in  the 
side  of  the  sheep,  and  to  frighten  it  into  a 
full,  indelible  remembrance  of  its  present 
folly  ?  Or,  does  the  shepherd,  angry  at  the 
time  wasted,  and  the  labor  incurred,  drive 
the  exhausted  beast,  bleeding  and  panting, 
and  foot-sore,  rapidly  back  along  the  home- 
ward way  ?  No.  He  is,  however  tired,  wil- 
ling to  be  yet  more  fatigued,  so  that  his 
poor  charge  be  saved  from  further  exhaus- 
tion, and  from  continued  exposure  to  peril. 
He  lays  it  on  his  shoulders,  not  with  up- 
braiding and  grudging,  chiding  at  its  folly, 
but  rejoicing  at  the  recovery.  And,  reach- 
ing home  he  summons  his  neighbors  to  con- 
gratulate him,  and  rejoice  with  him,  over 
the  success  of  his  pursuit  and  the  restora- 
tion, to  its  fellows  and  to  its  fold,  of  his  es- 
trayed  and  imperilled  charge. 

'*  I  say  unto  you," — I,  Jesus,  the  Son  of 
the  Father,  ever  in  the  Father's  bosom,  and 
fully  in  the  Father's  confidence  ;  I,  Jesus,  the 

2* 


l8  THE    LOST   SHEEP. 

Lord  of  Angels,  intimately  acquainted  with 
all  their  employments,  and  cognizant  of  all 
their  angelic  sympathies ;  T,  the  Maker  of 
your  race  on  the  earth,  and  of  their  shining 
ranks  on  high,  the  Creator  also,  utter  it.  I 
say  unto  you  :  "  there  is  joy,"  in  that  bright, 
far,  and  holy  heaven,  among  its  white-robed 
and  holy  tenantry,  over  one  such  sinner  that 
comes  penitent  to  my  teachings,  and  sits, 
docile  and  contrite  at  m-y  feet,  however  de- 
graded his  past  condition  and  however  vile 
his  offences,  and  however  forlorn  his  aspect 
and  his  prospects,  there  is  more  joy  in  the 
world  of  light  over  him,  than  over  ninety 
and  nine  just  persons,  who  need  no  repent- 
ance. Who  are  they  ?  The  self-righteous, 
who  suppose  themselves  so  just  as  to  need  no 
contrition  ?  Elsewhere,  the  Saviour  speaks 
of  such  righteousness  of  Scribes  and  Phari- 
sees ;  and  declares,  that  if  His  disciples  do 
not  attain  a  righteousness  surpassing  such 
low  standard,  they  cannot  enter  heaven  at 
all.  Such  Pharisaic  excellence  would  move 
angels  to  tears  rather  than  to  songs.     Who 


THE   LOST   SHEET.  I9 

then  are  the  just?  We  suppose  the  more 
proper  allusion,  to  be  to  the  angels,  who, 
keeping  their  first  estate,  have  never  sinned  ; 
or,  if  there  be  other  beings  like  man,  inhab- 
iting other  worlds,  whose  Eden  wa^  never 
marred  and  forfeited  by  sin,  then  we  are 
taught,  that  over  their  permanence  in  holi- 
ness, there  is  not  the  loud  acclaim  of  joy, 
that  there  is  over  each  and  every  conver- 
sion of  a  sinner  from  our  own  lost  and 
doomed  race. 

We  sometimes  wish  the  privilege  of  read- 
ing our  neighbor's  heart.  But  here,  open- 
ed by  the  hand  of  the  Incarnate  Revealer 
and  Redeemer,  we  have  a  window  into  the 
very  heart  of  God.  We  see  His  feelings 
of  compassion  towards  our  race  and  our 
own  selves.  He  leaves  the  society  of  the 
sinless  and  the  angelic,  and  the  anthems  of 
seraphim  and  cherubim,  and  the  commu- 
nion of  heaven,  for  an  earthly  allotment  of 
toil  and  exposure.  He  must  traverse  "  dark 
mountains,"  when  He  confronts  the  contra- 
diction of  sinners  and   the  assaults  of  the 


20  THE    LOST   SHEEP. 

tempter,  and  He  becomes  denied  of  earth 
and  buffetted  of  hell.  To  lift  the  victim  of 
sin,  and  the  heir  of  wrath,  to  His  shoul- 
ders, as  the  recovered  and  ransomed  one, 
that  shoulder  must  bear  the  cross  of  shame 
and  agony  ;  that  soul  of  His  must  stoop  to 
the  yoke  of  denial,  mockery  and  betrayal. 
He  must  encounter  the  hidings  of  the  face 
of  the  Father.  Weary  He  sits  at  the  well 
of  Samaria.  But  more  weary,  He  faints 
under  the  weight  of  the  cross  they  have 
made  Him  bear.  More  wear}',  hangs  He, 
nailed  to  its  wood  ;  the  jeer,  the  shout,  the 
blasphemy,  all  jangling  wildly  in  His  ears, 
as  He  is  ready  to  give  up  the  ghost,  crying 
in  His  extremity,  as  the  God-forsaken  one, 
"  Eloi,  Eloi,  Lama  Sabacthani !  My  God  ! 
my  God  !  why  hast  Thou  forsaken  me  ?" 

And  this  Redemption  is  not  all.  He  is, 
as  the  High  Priest,  now  and  after  His  ex- 
altation to  the  heavenly  glory,  still  the  bur- 
den bearer  of  His  people.  In  His  provi- 
dence. He  brings  them  back  from  their  im- 
penitent estrayment.      '*  He   restoreth  my 


THE   LOST   SHEEP.  21 

soul,"  said  David.  He  bears  them  about, 
through  all  the  tangled  pathway  of  life,  as 
a  nurse  her  infant ;  nor  when  mothers  for- 
get the  babe  of  their  love,  can  He  forget. 
He  cherishes  for  them  a  vivid  and  lasting 
sympathy.  In  all  their  affliction.  He  is 
afflicted,  never  fails  or  forsakes  them,  to  old 
age  and  into  death  ;  still  sustains,  still  cher- 
ishes, and  still  defends  them.  The  High 
Priest  of  the  Jewish  Economy  had  the 
breast-plate,  with  its  twelve  jewels,  bearing 
the  names  of  the  twelve  tribes,  supported 
by  bands  that  passed  over  His  shoulders. 
The  names  of  Judah  and  Levi  and  their 
brethren  thus  lay  on  his  heart ;  whilst  the 
weight  of  the  record  and  the  memorial  was 
pressing  on  His  shoulder.  The  heart,  the 
seat  of  feeling  ;  the  shoulders  are  the  seat 
of  strength.  Affection  and  Power  are 
shown  thus,  blended  together  in  undertak- 
ing the  cause,  and  sustaining  the  remem- 
brance of  his  people.  So  is  it  in  the  great 
Antitype.  His  shoulder  of  Omnipotence 
sustains,  and   His  bosom,  with  its  Infinite 


22  THE   LOST   SHEEP. 

Tenderness  and  unforgetting  Omniscience, 
registers  and  defends  His  own  Israel. 
"  The  Great  Shepherd  of  the  Sheep,"  as 
the  Apostle  entitles  Him,  has  shed  His 
blood  not  idly  and  ineffectually,  but  as  the 
gory  sanction,  "  the  blood  of  an  Everlasting 
Covenant." 

III.  But  why  should  there  be  more  joy 
over  the  recovery  of  the  fallen,  than  over 
the  preservation  of  the  unfallen  ?  We 
answer,  in  part,  because  it  is  here,  as  in  hu- 
man relationship,  where  the  mother  seems 
most  to  love  the  child  whose  sickness  has 
cost  her  most  alarms  and  watchings,  and 
drawn  most  heavily  on  her  maternal  tender- 
ness. Just  as  in  the  strifes  of  life,  you  attach 
new  importance  and  value  to  the  interests 
that  had  been  threatened,  to  the  venture 
that  had  been  nearly  wrecked,  and  that  was, 
with  effort  and  risk,  secured  again.  Just  as 
in  the  dying  benediction  of  Jacob,  he  re- 
serves for  his  favorite  Joseph  a  portion,  es- 
pecially dear  to  the  patriarch,  which  he,  the 
father,  had  taken  with  his  sword  and  his 


THE    LOST   SHEEP.  23 

bow  out  of  the  hand  of  the  alien.  The 
struggle  had  made  that  one  of  the  dearest 
of  Jacob's  possessions.  Not  only  was  Labor 
wrought  into  the  boon,  but  Valor  also,  and 
Endurance.  Just  as  in  your  national  affairs, 
Liberty  and  Union  will  acquire  new  pre- 
ciousness  from  the  expenditure  of  treasure 
and  blood  required  to  vindicate  and  secure 
them,  and  from  the  taunts  and  insults  of  Old 
World  despotism  over  your  expected  loss 
of  these  rich  franchises. 

But,  we  suppose,  that  for  the  high  joy  of 
angels  there  is  another  reason.  They 
might,  themselves,  never  have  been  so  ef- 
fectually guarded  against  the  approach  of 
sin  to  themselves ;  so  thoroughly  encased 
against  all  temptations  to  emulate  the  trea- 
son and  join  the  revolt  of  their  old  asso- 
ciate and  compeer  Lucifer,  had  not  the  in- 
carnation and  sacrifice  of  the  Son  shown 
the  evil  of  sin  ;  had  not  the  punishment  of 
evil  men  and  evil  angels  so  illustrated  God's 
wrath  against  iniquity. 

The  tininess  of  our  planet,  it  may  be,  is 


24  THE   LOST   SHEEP. 

not  preventing  it  from  serving  as  the  great 
battle-field  of  God's  moral  universe.  How 
oft  a  spot  of  military  encounter,  itself  not 
larger  than  one  of  the  city  wards,  ma)"  yet 
in  our  recent  national  struggle,  have  de- 
cided, by  the  battle  there  fought,  the  po- 
litical destinies  of  the  broad  continent.  So 
it  is  in  God's  government  of  our  world 
and  race.  On  our  small  nook  of  a  globe, 
may  yet  gather  and  centre  all  the  solici- 
tudes of  Heaven,  and  all  the  fierce  hopes 
of  Hell.  Good  and  evil  may  come  here, 
into  one  long  and  dread  death-grapple.  The 
Apostle  said,  he  was  a  spectacle  to  men 
and  angels.  And  all  the  church  on  earth, 
widely  dispersed  and  variously  schooled, 
affords  a  spectacle  of  divine  wisdom  and 
faithfulness,  into  which  angels,  stooping 
down,  desire  to  look,  catching  thus  pro- 
founder  glimpses  than  the  Godhead,  not  en- 
shrouded and  not  incarnate,  elsewhere  al- 
lows them.  These  angels  of  light  might 
have  swerved,  had  not  Christ's  care  and 
skill,  in  saving  the  saved  of  earth,  so  de- 


THE   LOST   SHEEP.  2$ 

veloped  new  wonders  of  Divine  Truth  and 
Grace,  before  unsuspected. 

In  Christ,  and  in  Christ's  Church,  the 
heavenly  powers  see  more  glorious  exhibi- 
tions than  elsewhere  of  the  excellence  of 
Jehovah,  and  every  new  convert  is  a  great 
trophy,  having  its  own  new  and  peculiar 
memorial  of  the  Redeemer's  goodness  and 
gentleness  and  forbearance. 

Angels  rejoice,  again,  with  an  especial 
exultation  at  Christ's  work,  because  of  their 
full  and  adoring  sympathy  with  the  Lord 
of  Angels  and  men.  Now  Christ  rejoiced 
in  spirit  at  the  revelation  of  the  Father  to 
"  babes  and  sucklings ;"  that  mere  lambs, 
estrays  from  the  flock  of  the  Holy,  should 
be  made  more  than  conquerors  over  him 
who  goeth  about  as  a  roaring  lion,  seeking 
whom  he  may  devour,  was  matter  of  exul- 
tation to  Christ.  He  is  "anointed  with  joy 
above  His  fellows,"  in  His  mediatorial 
work.  Angels  sympathize  with  Jesus,  from 
their  admiring  adoration  of  His  nature  and 
His  career.  They  minister  to  the  heirs  of 
3 


26  THE   LOST   SHEEP. 

salvation.  They  did  to  the  disembodied 
spirit  of  Lazarus,  borne  from  the  gate  of 
Dives :  and  fresh  from  the  dunghill  where 
his  body  grovelled,  his  spirit  mounts,  on 
their  wings  and  under  their  escort,  to  the 
helds  of  light,  to  meet  and  to  enhance  the 
hymns  of  just  men  made  perfect. 

Because  of  its  revelation  of  the  Divine 
Nature,  because  of  their  own  surer  confir- 
mation in  holiness  by  the  great  drama  of 
Human  Redemption,  and  because  of  their 
full  sympathy  with  Jesus,  who  rejoices  in 
His  own  kingly  and  priestly  triumph  as 
head  of  the  church,  there  is  especial  joy 
among  angels  over  every  journey  of  the 
Good  Shepherd  to  rescue  His  lost  and  per- 
ishing charge. 

Now,  brethren,  beloved  in  the  Lord,  arc 
we  Christ's  ?  We  have,  in  such  case.  His 
spirit.  What  joy  to  serve  such  a  Master ! 
But,  if  imbued  with  His  temper,  we  go 
forth  to  seek  the  lost.  The  world's  moun- 
tains of  error  and  wrong,  and  care  and  toil, 
apd  persecution  and   blasphemy,   must   be 


THE   LOST   SHEEP.  2J 

threaded.  The  gospel  is  an  aggressive  and 
itinerant  onslaught  of  mercy  as  upon  earth's 
sinners,  the  vile,  the  forlorn,  the  outcast, 
the  barbarous.  Its  messengers  go  out  into 
the  highways  and  hedges,  by  the  Master's 
express  commission  and  charge.  It  reach- 
es the  far.  It  grasps  the  self-destroyed.  It 
hopes  for  the  hopeless.  It  pities  the  piti- 
less. It  weeps  and  prays  and  loves,  though 
confronted  by  the  unlovely  and  unloving. 

Are  you  a  Christian,  sad  and  ready  to 
faint,  because  of  the  difficulties  of  the  path? 
Do  life's  uncertainties  perplex  you  ;  and  is 
the  strength  fast  waning,  and  are  heart  and 
flesh  ready  to  fail  ?  Look  away  to  the  sym- 
pathies of  Jesus.  Fling  yourselves  on  the 
Shepherd  and  Bishop  of  souls.  Are  you 
laboring  in  His  service,  and  to  meet,  in  re- 
turn, often  misrepresentation  and  wrong? 
Look  up.  It  is  not,  on  your  part,  going  as 
far,  or  bearing  as  much,  as  the  Master  went, 
and  as  the  Master  bore,  on  your  behalf. 
"The  joy  set  before  Him,"  sustained  Him. 
Let  its  anticipation  cheer  and  hearten  you. 


28  THE   LOST   SHEEP. 

It    is   glad,   and    sure,   and    inconceivably 
near. 

Are  you  a  sinner,  living  reckless  of  Christ, 
and  His  calls,  and  His  vast  claims  on  your 
gratitude  ?  Remember  your  exposure  to 
enemies,  whom  )^ou  are  not  adequate  to 
outwit  and  to  repel.  The  Shepherd's  quest, 
on  the  part  of  the  Redeemer,  goes  on.  You 
shun  it,  and  you  slight  it.  But,  side  by 
side,  with  the  Redeemer's  quest  of  souls, 
goes  on  the  great  Wolf  Hunt;  the  World, 
the  Flesh,  and  the  Devil,  in  their  terrible 
leash  of  lying,  hate  and  desolation,  sweep 
roaring  by  ;  and  you  are  sure,  if  continuing 
away  from  Christ,  to  be  entangled  among 
their  rushing  troop,  and  to  be  destroyed  a 
helpless  victim  in  their  destruction  that  tar- 
rieth  not.  And  with  Avhat  plea,  will  you 
shelter  your  ingratitude  to  Christ,  and  your 
criminal  and  habitual  and  life-long  denial 
of  His  right  to  your  affection  and  your 
trust?  Well  might  the  stout  old  sage  and 
moralist  of  England,  Samuel  Johnson,  burst 
into  tears,  as  he  habitually  did,  when  recall- 


THE    LOST   SHEEP.  29 

ing  the  image  of  our  text  as  given  in  the 
old  mediaeval  Judgment  Hymn,  in  that 
verse  which  runs : 

"  Wearily  for  me  Thou  soughtest : 
On  the  cross  my  soul  Thou  boughtest ; 
Lose  not  all  for  which  Thou  wroughtest." 


3* 


THE    LOST    COIN. 


Either  what  woman,  having  ten  pieces  of  silver,  if 

SHE  lose  one  piece,  DOTH  NOT  LIGHT  A  CANDLE,  AND  SWEEP 
THE   HOUSE,  AND  SEEK  DILIGENTLY  TILL  SHE  FIND  IT  ? 

And  WHEN  SHE  HATH  FOUND  IT,  SHE  CALLETH  HER  FRIENDS 
AND  HER  NEIGHBOURS  TOGETHER,  SATING,  ReJOICE  WITH  ME  ; 
FOR  I  HAVE  FOUND  THE  PIECE  WHICH  I  HAD  LOST. 

LiKEAVISE,  I  SAY  UNTO  YOU,  ThERE  IS  JOY  IN  THE  PRESENCE 
OF  THE  ANGELS  OF  GOD  OVER  ONE  SINNER  THAT  REPENTETH. 

— Luke,  chap.  xv.  8-10. 


AMONGST  the  hearers  of  our  Lord 
were  those  of  either  sex.  Some  were 
thus,  as  herdsmen  and  tillers,  busied  in  the 
field,  owned  flocks,  and  drove  plows ;  others, 
the  mothers  and  sisters,  wives  and  daugh- 
ters of  these,  had  the  circle  of  their  activ- 
ities and  anxieties  mainly  within  the  nar- 
rower lirriits  of  the  home.  To  this  last 
home-keeping  class  speaks  his  next  illustra- 
tion. Do  the  Pharisees  murmur  at  His 
ready  welcome  of  the  sinner,  lost  to  God, 
and  lost  to  his  fellows,  and  lost  to  himself, 
but  b}^  grace  to  be  reclaimed  ?     He  appeals 

(30 


32  THE   LOST   COIN. 

to  their  own  modes  of  dealing  with  losses 
far  more  petty  in  character.  And,  by  that 
quiet  gradation  which  chains  together  so 
many  of  our  Lord's  sentences,  He,  who  had 
begun  with  a  loss  in  men's  stables  and  out- 
lying sheepfolds,  comes  now  down  to  a  loss 
out  of  the  purse  borne  about  the  person, 
and  stowed  in  the  girdle :  as,  in  the  next 
parable,  He  goes  yet  closer  to  the  soul,  in 
picturing  a  loss  amongst  the  rarest  and  cost- 
liest of  the  heart's  treasures,  dearer  than 
herds,  dearer  than  revenues  —  a  man's  own 
guarded  and  cherished  offspring.  What 
Lord  Bacon  called  a  bringing  home  of  wis- 
dom "  to  men's  business  and  bosoms,"  was, 
in  our  Lord,  exhibited  in  a  simpler  mode, 
but  on  a  grander  scale.  Thus  His  parables 
travelled  here,  from  the  farmer's  live-stock 
and  sheepfolds  to  the  purse  borne  at  the 
girdle ;  and  then  from  the  purse  to  the 
heart  beating  under  that  girdle,  into  the 
longing,  yearning,  smitten  soul  of  a  father, 
who  had  nourished  and  brought  up  chil- 
dren, but  had  hoped  and  waited,  toiled,  ac- 


THE   LOST   COIN.  33 

cumulated,  endowed  and  lavished,  only  to 
see  his  bounties  toward  his  children  wasted, 
and  his  affection  for  them  requited  by  sullen, 
base  ingratitude. 

The  parables  of  sheep  and  coin  touched 
"business."  The  parable  of  the  prodigal 
shot  into  the  *'  bosom."  The  first  illustra- 
tion brushed  the  skirts,  the  last  tugged  at 
the  heart-strings.  And  so,  too.  He  deepens 
the  relative  amount  of  the  loss  as  He  pro- 
ceeds. Of  the  flock,  but  one  was  missing, 
and  nigh  a  hundred  were  left.  Out  of  the 
purse  had  gone  not  a  hundredth  coin  merely, 
leaving  ninety  and  nine  behind,  but  a  whole 
tenth  of  its  contents.  Out  of  the  family 
was  a  Joseph  missing ;  but  were  eleven 
brothers  and  a  sister  left  to  replace  the  one 
absent  ?  There  had  gone,  not  only  a  tenth 
child,  leaving  nine  brothers  and  sisters  to 
replace  his  alienation  ;  but  the  one-half  of 
the  branches  of  the  household  tree  are 
lopped  off.  The  homestead  is  half  unroofed. 
It  is  a  Jacob  who  has  no  Judah,  and  no 
Dan,  and  no  Reuben,  and  no  Simeon.     He 


34  THE   LOST   COIN. 

has  but  a  Joseph  and  a  Benjamin  ;  and  that 
youngest  born,  his  Benjamin,  is  not ;  for  he 
had  turned  ingrate,  and  sot,  and  outcast, 
flung  into  a  remote  exile  of  his  own  choos- 
ing, and  wrapt  in  a  sad  infamy  of  his  own 
weaving. 

So,  too,  does  our  Lord  deepen  the  shades 
of  guilt  imputed  to  the  offender  in  the  sin 
that  has  made  him  lost  to  God  and  rendered 
him  an  estray  from  peace  and  an  outcast 
from  hope.  A  sheep  wanders  from  the 
fold  :  it  is  a  fit  emblem  of  the  thoughtless 
sinner,  erring  through  weakness  and  silliness 
rather  than  of  design.  A  sheep  may  inartic- 
ulately confess  and  implore,  when  it  bleats 
for  compassion.  But  the  coin  dropped ; 
w'hat  power  has  it  of  guiding-its  own  re- 
turn, of  proclaiming  its  sense  of  abandon- 
ment, and  of  speaking  out  the  rights  of  its 
real  and  only  owner?  Utterly  dependent 
on  that  owner's  care  for  a  recovery,  and  it 
all  turning  on  the  will  of  the  first  finder 
whether  the  coin  is  to  be  embezzled  or  to 
be  restored  to  its  own  original  place  and 


THE   LOST   COIN.  35 

proprietor,  does  not  the  dull  helplessness  of 
the  poor  piece  of  money  well  bespeak  the 
desperate  condition  of  a  sinner  morally 
disabled  —  helpless  by  his  obduracy,  who 
has  neither  skill,  nor  will,  nor  transient  wish 
to  retvirn  to  God,  but  whom  sin  has  bruti- 
fied  and  blinded  into  such  utter  insensi- 
bility, about  his  own  danger  and  about 
God's  wrath,  that  over  him  Sabbaths  and 
Providences  and  Scriptures  roll  unnoted, 
as  the}'^  would  over  a  shilling  stamped  into 
the  mire  and  covered  with  the  dust  of  suc- 
cessive weeks  and  years.  And  so  in  the 
forlorn  prodigal,  how  has  the  Saviour  de- 
picted the  wilful  and  conscious  sinner  de- 
liberately, and  persistently,  and  habitually 
multiplying  his  offences,  squandering  all 
his  past  privileges,  and  scorning  all  his 
earlier  mercies.  First  have  we  the  thought- 
less, and  next  the  helpless,  and  lastly  the 
wilful  sinner ;  yet,  tracking  the  transgressor 
through  all  these  degrees  of  deepened  and 
indurated  and  desperate  iniquity,  God's 
mercy    is    seen    letting    itself    down,   past 


36  THE   LOST   COIN. 

thoughtlessness  and  helplessness  and  wilful- 
ness, as  by  the  successive  shelvings  of  the 
abyss  of  estrangement  and  peril  and  deprav- 
ity, into  which  the  sinner  has  rolled  himself. 
Does  he  plunge  from  one  ledge  to  a  deeper, 
and  is  the  cavernous  gloom  of  the  pit. grown 
more  horribly  dark  as  he  descends  ?  God 
comes  down,  and  with  an  infinite  com- 
passion, adorable  to  all  eternity,  is  He  seen 
"  devising  methods  how  His  banished  ones 
may  return."  He  is  scheming  that  His 
lost  ones  may  be  re-installed,  and  how  they 
may  be  regenerated,  that  they  may  be  fit- 
tingly and  be  permanently  re-instated  in 
the  renounced  household  and  homestead. 

And  as,  in  that  great  scheme  of  human 
recovery,  the  gospel  of  the  great  salvation, 
the  whole  of  the  Divine  Trinity  was  em- 
barked, so  these  several  parables,  here  in- 
terlocked, seem  to  allude  each  primarily  to 
the  work  of  one  as  distinguished  from  the 
others  of  the  persons  of  the  Divine  Trinity, 
They  present,  the  first,  the  Atoning  Son  ; 
and  the  third,  the  call  —  effectual  to  recall, 


THE   LOST   COIN.  37 

to  adopt,  and  to  justify  —  the  call  of  the 
Eternal  Father ;  so  does  this  intervening 
parable  that  stands  midway  between  the 
others,  and  upon  which  our  thoughts  now 
fix,  seem  to  paint  the  offices  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  the  Enlightener,  the  Disturber  or 
Reprover,  and  the  Seeker  of  the  souls  that 
lay  buried  in  the  gloom  of  ignorance  and 
the  quiet  dust  of  worldliness,  and  under  the 
litter  and  the  defilement  of  sin.  It  is  the 
Spirit  that  builds  and  that  orders  the  House 
of  God  ;  and  his  prerogative  it  especially  is, 
by  an  effectual  severing,  to  quarry  out  the 
living  stones  for  the  Heavenly  Temple,  to 
search  out,  from  the  ruins  of  the  Fall,  God's 
elect  ones,  who  are,  in  the  day  of  reckon- 
ing, to  be  counted  among  His  jewels,  and 
to  be  eternally  treasured  in  His  heavenly 
kingdom.  And  as  specially  answering  to 
these,  the  Spirit's  peculiar  offices,  as  the 
type  of  the  Divine  Regeneration,  following 
close  on  the  Divine  Redemption,  it  seems 
fitting  to  put  that  one  of  the  three  images 
used  by  our  Lord  as  to  man's  lost  estate, 
4 


38  THE   LOST   COIN. 

which  most  vividly  describes  man's  pitiful 
and  utter  helplessness,  in  this  next  or  sec- 
ond place.  The  Spirit  follows  the  Son ; 
Pentecost  succeeded  Calvary.  It  is  the  im- 
age of  a  silver  coin  rolled  away  into  ob- 
scurity, hidden  in  the  dust  and  gloom. 
Amidst  the  bones  last  gnawed  and  splinter- 
ed by  the  dogs  in  yon  corner,  there  lies,  it 
may  be,  this  coin  beside  the  crusts  dropped 
by  the  children,  or  under  the  dust  and  mud 
brought  in  from  the  highway.  Man  needs  re- 
pentance. The  Son  of  God  provided  for  the 
bestowment  of  that  penitence,  being  Him- 
self "  exalted  as  a  Saviour  to  give  repent- 
ance and  the  remission  of  sins."  The  Father 
welcomes  the  exhibition  and  exercise  of  that 
repentance.  But  it  is  the  Spirit  of  God  who 
works  the  repentance  itself,  who  inspires 
the  contrite  desire,  and  who  sheds  around 
the  sepulchre  of  our  spiritual  death,  and 
wafts  down  upon  this  moral  decay,  that 
light  of  life — that  breath  of  heaven — which 
disperses  the  gloom,  and  arrests  the  corrup- 
tion,   and   banishes   the    inert   silence    and 


THE   LOST   COIN.  '  39 

apathy.  It  is  the  Spirit  who  restores  to 
God's  treasure-house  that  soul,  which,  at 
first,  was  coined  in  God's  image,  and  gar- 
nered for  his  revenues,  but  which  has  since 
escaped,  helplessly  and  hopelessly,  from  His 
service,  to  be  trodden  in  the  dust,  and  to 
be  swept  into  the  indiscriminate  offscour- 
ings "  whose  end  is  to  be  burned,"  had  not 
mercy  thus  interposed. 

We  suppose,  indeed,  it  not  an  untenable 
opinion,  which  many  ancient  worthies  have 
held,  that  the  Spirit  is  represented,  especial- 
ly, as  working  in  the  Church  of  God  ;  and 
that,  therefore,  the  laborer  in  the  imagery 
of  this  parable  is  of  that  sex  which  is  select- 
ed so  often  to  describe  in  the  Bible  the 
Church  of  the  Most  High.  "  Either  what 
woman  having  ten  pieces  of  silver,  if  she 
lose  one  piece,  doth  not  light  a  candle  and 
sweep  the  house  and  seek  diligently  till  she 
find  it  ?"  Woman  is,  in  the  family  life,  espe- 
cially designed  of  God,  who  orders  the 
household,  to  be  the  economist.  Her  thrift, 
and  care,  and  forethought  may  build  the 


40  ■  THE   LOST   COIN. 

family:  as  her  waste  and  pride  and  sloth 
and  luxury  may  desolate  and  shatter  it.  She 
is  presented  here,  not  as  a  princess  whose 
bracelet  has  lost  one  pearl  from  its  appro- 
priate setting,  and  who  is  perplexed  how  to 
fill  up  the  vacant  socket:  or  a  daughter  of 
Herodias,  who  is  apparelling  herself  for  the 
dance  before  the  chief  estates  of  the  king- 
dom, and  who  finds  the  diamond  frontlet  for 
her  brow  to  have  been  in  some  way  mis- 
placed. It  is  a  simple  peasant-wife,  whose 
whole  store  is  but  some  ten  silver  coins, 
none  large  in  size.  One  is  wanting ;  she  be- 
lieves it,  though  missing,  yet  in  the  house. 
The  cottage  homes  of  Palestine,  in  which 
our  Lord  so  often  lodged,  and  in  one  of 
which  He  was  reared  at  Nazareth,  are  often 
furnished  only  with  a  floor  of  the  hard  earth, 
and  the  chambers  are  often  lit  only  by  win- 
dows high  up  in  the  wall,  like  the  narrow 
slits  and  loop-holes  of  our  barns,  admitting 
but  little  of  the  outer  sun-hght.  Indeed, 
many  of  the  ancient  homes  had  no  light  but 
by  the  door.     On  the  hard,  beaten  earth, 


THE   LOST   COIN.  4I 

coin  or  trinket  once  dropped  may  be  soon 
covered  among  the  litter,  brought  in  by  the 
sandals  of  the  traveller,  or  the  crumbs  and 
fragments  flung  to  the  dogs  or  the  house- 
hold animals,  when  these  are  permitted  to 
enter.  Perhaps  the  little  store  of  savings, 
the  ten  pieces  of  money,  thus  lessened,  had 
been  laid  up  to  meet  the  rent-day.  Per- 
haps it  was  the  hard-won  wages  earned  by 
some  child  who  served  in  the  neighbors' 
fields,  and  brought  the  scant,  slow  gains  to 
a  mother  to  keep, — some  Ruth,  who  glean- 
ed after  the  reapers  of  a  neighbor  Boaz,  or 
some  Jacob  who  kept  sheep  in  the  wilder- 
ness pastures  for  some  covetous  Laban. 
One  piece  is  lacking.  She  trusts  that  it  has 
not  yet  gone  from  the  house.  If  the  win- 
dows give  not  light  enough  to  search  each 
nook,  the  lamp  is  lit.  If  the  dust  might 
conceal  it,  the  floor  shall  be  swept,  great  as 
may  be  the  cloud  raised  by  the  broom  to 
overspread  the  apartment.  And  "  diligent- 
ly," or  repeatedly,  and  everywhere,  and 
continually,  will  the  owner  search  until  she 
4* 


42  THE   LOST   COIN. 

finds  it.  So  has  God,  by  His  Spirit,  sent  the 
Light  of  Revelation  into  the  world,  and  es- 
pecially into  the  Church.  So  has  He,  in 
that  Church,  by  the  faithful  preaching  of 
the  word,  and  by  its  dissemination  as  the 
written  word  also,  beamed  light  into  the  old 
darkness  and  across  the  settled  unconcern 
of  society.  So  has  He,  in  dealing  with  the 
individual  soul,  shot  rays  of  searching  light 
into  the  conscience  and  heart.  The  insen- 
sate Ahab  starts  at  feeling  that  his  "  enemy," 
the  truth,  has  "  found  him  out."  The  un- 
believing Jew  has  been  pierced  to  the  soul 
in  the  sense  of  his  sin  and  its  ruinousness 
and  heinousness.  Lydia  has  had  her  heart 
opened  to  receive  the  truth,  as  the  flower 
opens  to  the  morning  beams  of  the  summer 
sun.  The  jailer,  late  so  fierce  and  brutal, 
with  a  heart  torn  open  like  a  rock  riven  by 
the  earthquake,  cries  out  in  alarm :  What 
shall  I  do  to  be  saved  ? — as  he  discerns  his 
hideous  mistakes,  and  shudders  at  the  new 
light  streaming  in,  to  show  his  guilt  and  his 
hardihood,  and  to  lay  bare  the  nearness  of 


THE   LOST   COIN.  43 

eternal  death,  of  which  he  had  been  so  bru- 
tishly  unconscious. 

And  as  mere  habit  and  neglect  hide  souls 
from  themselves,  and  from  the  just  sympa- 
thy and  care  of  their  fellows,  God's  Spirit 
sends  its  great  disturbing  agencies  into  the 
society,  the  nation,  the  age,  or  into  the  nar- 
rower bounds  of  the  family.  The  besom 
does  not  really  make  the  new  dust ;  but  it 
only  brings  the  old  and  long-gathering  de- 
posit more,  for  a  time,  into  the  air  and  upon 
the  lungs.  The  messengers  of  the  Gospel 
are,  for  the  time,  regarded  as  "  turning  the 
world  upside  down."  Or  God's  provi- 
dences, in  calamities,  and  wars,  and  social 
revolutions,  show  men  the  magnitude  of 
past  hereditary  errors.  The  besom  of  judg- 
ment goes  shaking  society  out  of  its  torpor 
and  equanimity.  It  was  so  in  Luther's  day, 
and  in  Calvin's.  It  was  so  in  the  Puritans 
of  our  ancestral  Britain,  and  in  their  colo- 
nists who  crossed  to  this  countr)\  God,  by 
them,  broke  up  many  a  pile  of  quiet  litter ; 
and  brushed  aside  many  a  film  of  long-set- 


44  THE   LOST   COIN. 

tied  green  mould,  picturesque  in  its  ver- 
dure, or  venerable  in  its  grey,  hoar  antiqui- 
ty, which  had  gathered  upon  the  national 
conscience.  But  a  Bunyan,  and  a  Milton, 
and  a  Baxter,  and  an  Owen,  and  a  Howe 
were  precious  medals  brought  out  by  the 
besoming ;  and  Constitutional  freedom  and 
National  morality,  and  English  literature, 
and  Christian  piety  were  greatly  enriched 
by  the  agitation.  It  was  so  in  the  Revolu- 
tion that  made  us  a  nation.  It  was  so  in  the 
agitations  that  went  over  Europe  in  the 
train  of  our  first  Revolution.  It  was  so  in 
our  last  great  struggle.  It  has  been  so  in 
Modern  Missions.  Would  you  put  that 
shaking  and  besoming  peremptorily  and  ef- 
fectually down  ?  We  hear,  behind  the  tur- 
moil and  the  thick  streaming  clouds  of  dust, 
as  God's  great  besoms  sweep  along,  the 
words  of  an  august  cry :  "  I  will  overturn, 
and  overturn,  and  overturn  until  He,  whose 
right  it  is  to  reign,  shall  come."  That  voice 
uttered  the  thunders  of  Sinai.  It  will  not 
be  safe,  men  of  the  earth,  to  lay  your  hands 


THE   LOST   COIN.  45 

or  try  your  potent  edicts  on  His  dread  be- 
soming. Let  the  potsherds  of  the  earth 
strive  with  the  potsherds  of  the  earth  ;  but 
woe  to  him  who  contendeth  with  his  Maker. 
God  is  sweeping  us  as  a  nation.  The  an- 
cient and  dust-covered  must  bear  the  touch 
of  God's  rough  rods  when  commissioned  of 
Him,  as  they  scrape  and  scatter  and  shiver. 
And  how  often  has  God  used  sore  trials,  to 
shake  the  unbelieving  and  impenitent  heart 
out  of  its  fatal  security !  Your  business  is 
unremunerative.  Your  debtors  fail:  your 
own  debts  grow  unmanageable.  Your 
friends  are  sick,  or  far,  or  they  grow  feeble 
and  unreliable.  Some  darling  child  is  vis- 
ited with  deadly  sickness.  The  circle  that 
once  girt  the  table  of  home  is  broken,  and  a 
void  place  is  left  at  the  hearth  and  the 
board,  never  to  be  filled  again  by  its  revered 
and  endeared  occupant.  Or,  your  own  bod- 
ily strength  fails,  and  your  mind  grows  de- 
spondent and  irresolute.  And  yet,  how 
often  in  just  such  scenes  of  disappointment, 
bereavement   and    sore   distress,   has   God 


46  THE   LOST  COIN. 

given  you  to  know  the  true  emptiness  of 
earth  and  the  indescribable  excellence  of 
Christ  and  his  salvation.  He  has  whirled — 
rudely,  fiercely,  you  think — away,  all  the 
old  peace  and  ease.  But  He  is  only  besom- 
ing the  habitation  to  recover  the  jewel.  He 
is  filling  the  old  familiar  scenes  with  a  whirl- 
wind of  cares  and  frettings  and  anxieties, 
to  show  thee  in  this  brief,  sharp  way,  the 
brightness  of  a  better  hope  than  earth  ever 
bred,  and  to  let  in  the  undying  light  of 
Grace  and  Redemption  on  thy  faint,  dark 
soul,  and  on  the  death-bed  and  the  grave 
and  the  far  Eternity  which  lie  before  thee. 

God,  in  His  enlightening  and  His  dis- 
turbing agencies,  is  bidding  the  people  and 
His  churches,  to  seek  out,  and  is  Himself, 
drawing  out  lost  souls.  These  times  of  agi- 
tation may  become  seasons  of  great  moral 
renovation.  The  church  should,  in  her 
own  bounds,  look  for  the  lost — the  neglect- 
ed— the  overlooked — the  estrayed — the  dis- 
regarded, and  the  down  -  trodden.  Her 
Lord's  jewels  may  be  amongst  these  sweep- 


THE   LOST   COIN.  47 

ings.  So  Carey,  and  Fuller,  and  Ryland, 
and  Sutcliffe,  looked  over  seas  and  conti- 
nents to  the  Bengalee  sweepings  in  the  In- 
dian chambers  of  the  wide  imperial  domin- 
ions of  Britain.  What  spoils  for  Heaven — 
what  new  gems  for  the  Saviour's  mediato- 
rial crown,  did  they  not  find,  rewarding  the 
search.  So  Judson,  and  Boardman,  and 
Vinton,  labored  for  the  Burman  and  Karen. 
And  so,  at  home,  the  Sabbath-school  Teach- 
er, and  the  Tract  Visitor,  and  the  Home 
Missionary,  may  find,  and  should  seek  dili- 
gently and  prayerfully  until  they  do  find, 
the  lost,  that  are  their  Master's,  in  the 
wide  wastes  of  the  neglect  and  squalor  and 
ignorance  and  destitution  of  our  great  cities. 
So  may  battle-fields  and  hospitals  and  mov- 
ing armies,  have  going  through  them,  the 
quest  of  Christian  sympath}^,  and  Christian 
labor,  and  Christian  prayer,  and  Christian 
generosity,  and  Christian  brotherhood,  and 
Christian  patriotism.  Who  shall  calculate 
the  gains  thus  secured  to  Christs'  cause  ? 
The   Spirit   convinces   of  sin.     His   first 


48  THE   LOST   COIN. 

lessons  are  of  neccssit_v,  then,  humiliating, 
alarming  and  arousing.  He  leads  the  poor, 
burdened  pilgrim  by  the  quaking  mountain 
of  Sinai,  under  the  canopy  of  its  gloom  and 
thunderings,  and  over  the  miry  depths  of 
the  Slough  of  Despond.  Men  feel  them- 
selves strangely  conscious  of  a  misery  and 
guilt  and  weakness,  which  before  they  had 
never  suspected  as  belonging  to  them. 
They  go  from  side  to  side,  in  pursuit  of  a 
vain  relief,  and  meet  only  disappointment 
and  rebuffs.  But  as  the  light  shines  from 
the  Strait  Gate  and  the  Atoning  Cross,  they 
begin  to  hope,  and  believe,  and  love,  and 
repent.  They  fall  at  the  feet  of  the  Redeem- 
er, whom  they  have  so  long  forgotten  or 
spurned.  They  find  under  the  strong, 
steady  light  of  Scripture,  as  expounded  and 
made  intense  by  the  Spirit,  that  Saviour  in 
His  glorious  fullness.  In  finding  Him,  they 
find  themselves ;  and  their  own  souls  thus 
saved — souls,  that,  if  found  at  death  out  of 
Christ,  would  have  had  their  redemption 
ceasing  forever  —  are  in  Him,  become  re- 


THE   LOST   COIN.  49 

splendent  centres,  each  in  its  own  orbit,  of  a 
glory  never  to  be  clouded,  and  fountains  of 
a  peace  unspeakable  and  eternal.  Out  of 
the  dust  and  the  darkness  comes  the  gem 
imperishable. 

And  Avhat  shall  be  the  result  of  all  the 
toil  and  the  turmoil  to  the  laborious  search- 
er for  souls,  and  the  successful  .'*  Fatigue, 
repining  and  sad  exhaustion  ?  No  —  the 
neighbors  are  made  sharers  of  the  joy,  al- 
though not  called  to  partake  the  search. 
The  grace  won  in  the  closet,  streams  free 
over  the  mart  and  the  highway.  True 
piety  is  the  love  of  the  God  of  Love ;  and 
rejoices  in  the  transmission  of  its  own  image 
and  feelings  to  others.  The  number  of  fel- 
low -  heirs  diminishes  not,  in  religion,  the 
share  of  each  kinsman  in  the  common  heri- 
tage. The  more,  the  richer.  Each  angel 
is  the  happier  on  this  very  day,  for  this 
day's  conversions  of  sinners  on  the  earth  to 
God  ;  though  it  be  but  some  ignorant  child, 
groping  its  way  to  the  feet  of  Jesus,  some 
poor  outcast,  feeling  on  his  soiled  brow  and 
S 


50  THE    LOST   COIN. 

shrivelled  heart,  the  first  beams  of  Christ 
as  the  Morning  Star;  some  sufferer,  turn- 
ing, amid  sorrow  and  death,  the  eye  of  a 
new-born  hope  and  a  new-found  peace  to- 
wards a  Blessed  Redeemer  and  an  opened 
Pai-adise.  If,  in  the  presence  of  Christ's 
Pharisaic  opponents,  who  watched  for  occa- 
casion  of  complaint,  there  was  a  pang  of 
envy  and  disappointment  at  his  reception 
of  the  poor,  penitent  publicans,  that  feel- 
ing of  discontent  did  not  pervade  the  bosom 
of  the  unseen,  angelic  attendants  of  our 
Lord.  "  He  was  seen  of  angels,"  as  they 
watched  His  earthly  pathway ;  and  angels, 
as  they  now  survey  the  course  of  His 
Church,  rejoice  in  each  sinner  repenting, 
though  his  be  dying  breath,  drawn  like  that 
of  the  penitent  thief,  on  the  cross  where  he 
hangs  in  mortal  anguish. 

What  then  is  the  lesson  of  all  this?  Are 
men  to  do  nothing  ?  Are  they  to  wait  pas- 
sively the  Spirit's  approach?  No,  my  Chris- 
tian brother.  The  Spirit  is  freely  given  to 
your  asking.     No,  my  unbelieving  friend,  it 


THE   LOST   COIN.  5  I 

is  your  fault,  to  be  continually  resisting  and 
grieving  that  Spirit.  It  has  solicited  you  in 
every  time  of  sober  thoughtfulness.  You 
have  gazed  on  the  starry  heavens,  and  felt  the 
paltriness  of  earth's  trifles.  You  have  looked 
over  the  ocean,  and  in  view  of  its  depths 
or  its  storms,  felt  the  feebleness  of  man  and 
the  majesty  of  man's  Maker.  You  have 
stood  by  the  bed-side  of  a  dying  Christian, 
and  have  heard  the  appeal  bidding  you  to 
seek  God.  In  the  sanctuary,  your  lethargy 
has  been  disturbed  ;  God  has  sent  truth  to 
hunt  and  harass  you.  In  all  these  scenes 
and  seasons,  the  still,  small  voice  of  the  Spirit 
has  been  calling  you  to  seek  God  ;  and  love 
has  been  calling  you  to  know  Christ,  and 
thus  be  at  peace. 

Nor  let  the  church  forget  the  terrible 
dangers  of  a  false  peace  and  a  carnal  se- 
curity. It  is  not  the  cr)'ing  "  Peace,  Peace," 
that  brings  it  to  State  or  to  Church,  when 
there  is  not  the  putting  away  of  sin,  and 
the  doing  of  justice,  when  there  is  no 
"  peace,"    of    equity  —  of    truth  —  and    of 


52  THE   LOST   COIN. 

brotherhood.  God  threatens  those  who 
"  settle,"  like  Moab,  in  mere  apathy  and 
worldliness,  "  on  their  lees,"  and  mistake 
sloth  and  luxury  for  the  repose  of  innocence 
and  blessedness.  He  warns  His  people  of 
the  slow  accretions  of  scandals,  and  errors 
and  judgments,  when  the  strong  man  armed 
keepeth  his  house  in  peace — when  excluded 
light,  and  gathered  dust,  have  festooned  the 
habitation  for  the  abode  of  Lukewarmness 
and  Indolence,  of  Apathy  and  Spiritual 
Death.  How  terrible  is  the  warning  of 
God,  by  His  prophet,  Malachi,  to  a  degen- 
erate Israel.  They  allowed,  so  to  speak, 
the  litter  of  their  heartlessness  and  formal- 
ism to  gather  around  their  religious  assem- 
blies, and  over  their  devout  services.  Then 
the  priest  and  the  people  became,  as  repro- 
bate silver,  fit  for  the  fate  of  the  refuse  into 
which  they  had  fallen.  The  besom  of  judg- 
ment was  about  to  gather,  and  to  hurl 
forth,  such  from  the  courts  and  privileges 
which  they  had  profaned.  "  If  you  will 
not   hear,"  saith   the    Lord,    "I  will,  curse 


THE   LOST   COIN.  53 

your  blessings :  yea,  I  have  cursed  them  al- 
ready, because  ye  do  not  lay  it  to  heart. 
Behold,  I  will  spread  dung  upon  your  faces, 
even  the  dung  of  )^our  solemn  feasts,  and 
one  shall  take  you  away  with  it."*  The 
Roman  legions,  and  the  fire-brands  of  Titus, 
flung  in  at  temple  windows,  to  set  ablaze 
the  temple  hangings,  were  God's  rude 
scavengers  to  sweep,  from  the  land  and 
courts  of  God,  formalism  and  worldliness  ; 
as  a  band  of  sweepers  goes  in  after  some 
great  gathering,  to  remove  the  mire  which 
the  multitude  had  brought  in,  by  their 
trampling  feet,  and  the  accumulated  frag- 
ments and  offal  of  their  turbulent  convoca- 
tion. 

When  the  Jews  were  about  to  keep  the 
Passover,  the  feast  of  unleavened  bread, 
they  searched  the  whole  house  with  candles 
to  cleanse  it  from  the  last  vestige  of  ordinary 
bread  which  had  leaven  in  it.  Paul  uses  this 
as  an  illustration  of  the  Christian  Church, 
as  needing  to  purge  themselves  anxiously 

*  Malachi,  ii.  2,  3. 


54  THE   LOST   COIN. 

for  revival,  and  thus  they  might  be  ready  to 
receive  a  blessing  from  God.  But  if  the 
■gospel  searches  and  scatters  and  disturbs, 
it  comes  also  to  sift  and  to  recover.  It 
elevates  multitudes,  who  were  before  igno- 
rant and  careless  and  depraved,  and  makes 
them  to  sit  in  heavenly  places  in  Christ 
Jesus.  It  takes  the  soul,  a  coin  stamped 
for  its  Maker,  in  His  own  image,  with  His 
superscription.  That  coin  has  been  trodden 
on  and  encrusted,  until  it  is  black  and  un- 
sightly. It  lies  in  the  ashes  —  it  is  swept 
into  the  dust-bin.  But  He,  who  has  "  no 
pleasure  in  the  death"  and  banishment  of 
the  sinner,  brings  it  forth.  He  says  over 
His  people :  "  Though  ye  have  lain  among 
the  pots,*  yet  ye  shall  be  as  the  wings  of  a 
dove  covered  with  silver  and  her  feathers 
with  yellow  gold."  The  grovelling  shall 
soar  and  the  lethargic  become  aspiring  and 
exultant.  The  dimness  shall  be  burnished. 
Human  nature  shall  be  made  sterling  by 
the  alchemy  of  Divine  Grace.     Man  shall 

*Psalm,  Ixviii.  13. 


THE   LOST   COIN.  55 

be  rendered  the  mate  of  angels.  The 
earthly  Church  shall  become  the  ante- 
chamber of  the  heavenly.  What  lay,  with 
Lazarus,  among  dogs,  shall,  Avith  Lazarus, 
disenthralled  and  disembodied,  rise  to  the 
society  of  seraphim,  and  the  presence  and 
smile  of  the  Lord  our  God,  in  the  fullness 
of  His  glory  and  the  clear  beamings  of  His 
love,  seen  at  His  own  home,  where  is  full- 
ness of  joy,  and  where  are  pleasures  forever 
more.  God  smites,  but  it  is  to  heal  you  ; 
He  disturbs  you,  but  it  is  to  give  ultimate 
calm  and  peace.  He  searches  you  out, 
buried  and  dark  in  your  low  estate  :  it  is  to 
lift  you  to  His  own  diadem,  to  shine  as  His 
jewels  with  a  cloudless,  endless  splendor. 

And  the  Church  of  God  needs  in  her  own 
home  and  house  to  be  busy,  grieving  not 
the  Spirit,  but  earnest  in  keeping  the  light 
burning  clearly,  and  vigilant  that  she  may 
prevent  the  dust  from  settling,  in  passive 
quiet,  on  her  inner  furniture.  To  remain 
by  the  past  is,  in  a  world  of  loss  and  change, 
not  the  sufficient  safesfuard  of  religfious  life 


56  THE   LOST  COIN. 

and  religious  usefulness.  The  dust  of  for- 
malism, and  lethargy,  and  worldliness,  may 
soon  bury  up  all  her  treasures  of  grace  and 
truth,  as  far  as  these  consist  in  Christian  ex- 
ample. The  discipline,  that  for  the  time 
agitates,  may  be  the  first  and  inevitable  con- 
dition precedent,  for  the  life  and  growth  that 
is  promised  to  her  pra3'ers  and  her  efforts. 

The  Church  has,  in  her  own  bounds,  scope 
for  large  work.  All  that  is  needed  is  but  to 
set  about  it,  in  God's  sight  and  strength,  in 
the  love  of  souls,  and  in  the  entreaty  for, 
and  the  expectation  of,  aid  from  His  good 
Spirit. 

It  is  work,  in  which  the  very  stars  of 
heaven,  and  the  angels  that  always  behold 
the  face  of  our  Father  in  heaven,  will  work 
with,  and  will  work  energetically  and  heart- 
ily for,  her.  Arise  and  shine,  then,  Church 
of  God!  Shake  thyself  from  the  dust,  and 
put  on  thy  beautiful  garments,  and  become 
the  praise  of  the  earth  and  the  joy  of  thy 
Lord. 

Times   of   change   and   commotion,   and 


THE   LOST   COIN.  57 

great  social  upheaval,  and  darkenings  that 
cloud  the  whole  horizon,  need  bring  no  sad 
and  chill  forebodings.  Seek  Christ,  and 
seek  the  increase  of  Christ's  Church ;  seek 
diligently  the  souls  of  the  perishing.  Hang 
out  the  lamp,  and  scan  the  omens  of  duty 
and  hope;  ply  patiently  and  cheerily  thy 
task  in  thy  own  special  field — in  thy  nook 
of  sorrow  and  toil.  Above  all,  pray  with- 
out ceasing;  and  thou  shalt  not  look  in 
vain,  or  find  thy  toil  bootless  or  thy  prayer 
unheeded.  The  promise  for  the  enquirer, 
is  made  to  diligent  effort  and  patient,  per- 
sistent research.  The  miner  does  not  ex- 
pect to  wash  gold  dust  into  his  coffers,  with 
the  first  stroke  of  his  pick,  and  the  first 
waving  of  his  sieve.  He  must  turn  the 
flood,  stand  deep  in  its  current  for  weary 
days,  and  lift  pick,  and  urge  spade,  till  the 
arm  aches  and  the  heart  wearies ;  but,  so 
and  thus  only,  comes  success.  It  is  so,  God 
has  said,  in  heavenly  things,  "  If  thou  shalt 
search  for  wisdom  as  for  hid  treasures,  thou 
shalt  find  her." 


58  THE   LOST  COIN. 

Let  not  the  burdened  soul,  distracted 
with  cares,  to  whom  the  outlook  on  life  is 
dark  and  tempestuous,  who  feels  God's 
Providence  tearing  into  the  old  rest  and 
scattering  roughly  and  suddenly,  the  old 
confidences,  therefore  give  way  to  despair. 
It  is  even  thus  that  God  is  righting  His 
own  house  and  making  the  walls  of  His 
cause  and  His  Zion  to  be  built  in  troublous 
times. 

And  what  is  the  joy  of  the  regenerate 
soul,  in  prospect  of  these  changes,  even 
whilst  yet  prisoned  in  the  body  and  sur- 
rounded with  the  conflicts  and  trials  and 
besetments  of  earth,  if  but  the  grace  of  God 
shines  in  the  soul.  How  can  it,  then,  adopt 
the  words  of  Charles  Wesley,  the  hymn- 
writer  of  our  Methodist  brethren — 

"  Long  my  imprisoned  spirit  lay, 

Fast  bound  in  sin  and  nature's  night ; 
Thine  eye  diffused  a  quickening  ray — 

I  woke — tlie  dungeon  flamed  with  light: 
I  rose,  went  forth,  and  followed  Thee." 

The  soul  lost  is  found  again.    The  creature. 


THE   LOST  COIN.  59 

wandering  and  diving  and  plunging  hell- 
ward,  is  saved ;  and  now  journeying  in  the 
care  and  under  the  conduct  of  God,  it  is 
climbing,  and,  one  day,  to  be  soaring  heav- 
enward. And  if  householders  are  glad  over 
their  augmented  stores  and  their  increasing 
home  comforts,  as  the  fields  grow  broader, 
and  the  harvests  richer,  and  the  revenues 
ampler,  and  the  ten  pieces  become  thou- 
sands and  tens  of  thousands — what  greater 
joy  is  his,  who  is  rich  toward  God,  whom 
God  has  made  useful  in  winning  immortal 
souls  to  the  knowledge  and  service  of 
Christ  Jesus.  The  mother,  the  Sabbath- 
school  teacher,  the  father,  the  pastor,  the 
missionary,  thus  honored,  are,  indeed,  blest  in 
having  turned  any  or  many,  or  brought  but 
the  individual,  or  won  the  multitude  from  the 
error  of  their  ways.  God  grant  that  each  of 
us  may  be  thus  rich,  as  said  Paul,  though 
ourselves  poor,  "  yet  making  many  rich." 
What  the  joy  of  a  father  and  a  Christian 
mother,  greeting  a  whole  household  given 
to  their  prayers,  and  safely  housed  at  last 


6o  THE   LOST   COIN. 

in  the  upper  skies.  The  waving  sieve,  the 
tossing  besom,  the  shadowing  cross,  all  will, 
in  that  world  of  light,  be  remembered  with 
a  fervid  gratitude, 

"  I  will  search  Jerusalem  with  candles," 
says  our  God  by  Zephaniah.*  Blessed 
those  ready  for  the  Divine  scrutin)^  "  I 
will  sit  as  a  refiner  and  purifier  of  silver," 
is  His  declaration  elsewhere,  f  Thrice 
blessed  those  whom  He,  the  Great  Refiner, 
shall  stamp  as  His  truly,  and  own  as  His 
eternally.  May  each  of  us,  my  hearers, 
thus  blessed  in  the  search,  and  even  under 
and  by  the  refining,  be  found  shining,  at 
the  last,  as  the  sun  forever  in  the  kingdom 
of  the  Father,  to  Whom — with  the  Son,  the 
Redeemer — and  the  Spirit,  the  Renewer,  the 
Sealer,  Sanctifier  and  Comforter,  be  glory 
evermore.     Amen. 

*  Zephaniah,  i.  12.  \  Malachi,  iii.  3. 


THE   LOST   SON. 


And  he  said,  A  certain  man  had  two  sons  : 

And  the  tounger  op  them  said  to  his  father,  Father,  give 

ME  THE  PORTION  OF  GOODS  THAT  FALLETH  TO  ME.  AnD  HE  DI- 
VIDED UNTO  THEM  HIS  LIVING. 

And  NOT  MANX  DATS  after,  the  tounger  SON  GATHERED  ALL 
TOGETHER,  AND  TOOK  HIS  JOURNEY  INTO  A  FAR  COUNTRY,  AND 
THERE  WASTED  HIS   SUBSTANCE  WITH  RIOTOUS  LIVING. 

And  WHEN  HE  HAD  SPENT  ALL,  THERE  AROSE  A  MIGHTY  FAMINE 
IN  THAT  LAND  ;   AND  HE  BEGAN  TO  BE  IN  WANT. 

And  HE  WENT  AND  JOINED  HIMSELF  TO  A  CITIZEN  OF  THAT 
COUNTRY  ;  AND  HE   SENT  HIM  INTO  HIS  FIELDS  TO  FEED  SWINE. 

And  he   WOULD   pain   have    filled   his   belly  with   THE   HUSKS 

that  the  swine  did  eat:  and  no  man  gave  unto  hin. 

And  when  he  came  to  himself,  he  said,  How  many  hired 
servants  of  my  father  have  bread  enough,  and  to  spare, 
and  i  perish  with  hunger  i 

i  will  arise  and  go  to  my  fapher,  and  will  say  unto  him 
Father,  I  have  sinned  against  Heaven,  and  before  thee. 

And  am  no  more  worthy  to  be  called  thy  son  :  make  me  as 
one  of  thy  hired  servants. 

And  he  arose,  and  came  to  his  father.     But  when  he  was 

YET  A  great  WAT  OFF,  HIS  FATHER  SAW  HIM,  AND  HAD  COMPAS- 
SION, AND   RAN,   AND   FELL   ON   HIS   NECK,  AND   KISSED   HIM. 

And  THE  SON  said  unto  HIM,  Father,  I  have  sinned  against 
Heaven,  and  in  thy  sight,  and  am  no  more  wortuy  to  be 

CALLED  thy  son. 

But  the  father  said  to  his  servants.  Bring  forth  the  best 
robe,  and  PUT  it  on  him  ;  and  put  a  ring  on  his  hand,  and 
SHOES  ON  HIS  feet  ; 

And  bring  hither  the  fatted  calf,  and  kill  it  ;  and  let 

us  EAT,  AND  BE  MERRY : 

For  this  my  son  was  dead,  and  is  alive  again  ;  he  was  lost, 

AND  18  FOUND.   AnD  THEY  BEGAN  TO  BE  MERRY. 

Now  his  elder  son  was  in  the  field  :  and  as  he  came  and 
drew  nigh  to  the  house,  he  heard  music  and  dancing. 

6  (6i) 


62  THE   LOST  SON. 


Akd  he  called  oxe  of  the  servants,  and  asked  ■what  these 
things  meant. 

And  he  said  unto  him.  Thy  brother  is  come  ;  and  thy  fa- 
ther HATH  KILLED  THE  FATTED  CALF,  BECAUSE  HE  HATH  RECEIVED 
niM   SAFE   AND   SOUND. 

And  he  was  angry,  and  would  not  go  in:   therefore  came 
his  father  out,  and  entreated  him. 
And  he  answering,  said  to  his  father,  Lo,  these  mant  years 

do     I     SERVE     THEE,    NEITHER     TRANSGRESSED     I    AT    ANY   TIME    THY 

commandment  ;  and  yet  thou  never  gavest  me  a  kid,  THAT  I 

MIGHT   make    merry  WITH   MY    FRIENDS  : 

But  AS  soon  as  this  thy  son  was  come,  which  hath  devour- 
ed THY  LIVING  WITH  HARLOTS,  THOU  HAST  KILLED  FOR  HIM  THE 
FATTED   CALF. 

And  HE  SAID  UNTO  HIM,  SoN,  THOU  ART  EVER  WITH  ME,  AND  ALL 
THAT  I  HAVE  IS   THINE. 

It  was  MEET  THAT  WE  SHOULD  MAKE  MERRY,  AND  BE  OLAD : 
FOR  THIS  THY  BROTHER  WAS  DEAD,  AND  IS  ALIVE  AGAIN  ;  AND  WAS 
LOST,  AND   IS   FOUND.  —Luke,  Chttp.  XV.  11-32. 


IS  it  not  disparaging  to  compare  man  to 
a  prodigal,  insensate  and  impoverished 
and  imbruted?  The  debasement  was  of 
man's  own  making.  God  is  but  stooping  to 
uplift  us  from  that  degradation  ;  and  to  en- 
trench and  environ  us  upon  the  heights  of 
His  recovered  favor,  and  amid  the  securi- 
ties of  His  avowed  Fatherhood. 

All  may  have  noticed  the  startling  ap- 
pearance of  reality, — the  distinctness  of  out- 
line, the  body  wath  its  shadows  standing 
forth  until  it  seems  it  could  almost  be  touch- 


THE   LOST   SON.  63 

ed, — which  distinguishes  the  stereoscopic 
view  of  some  landmark  or  monument  from 
the  ordinary  picture.  It  arises  from  the  in- 
strument's furnishing  two  different  views 
taken  at  two  different  points ;  but  made  in 
the  after  survey  both  to  blend  into  one.  It 
is,  by  seeming  to  see  it  from  two  sides  and 
under  two  aspects,  that  we  feel  the  apparent 
wholeness  and  roundness  and  reality,  of  the 
scene  or  the  structure  to  be  represented. 

Is  it  not  part  of  the  crowning  glory  of 
Revelation  that  it  gives  us  a  more  impres- 
sive and  vivid  representation  of  truths  and 
duties  and  sins,  by  its  giving  us  the  two- 
fold aspect  of  many  a  scene  and  character 
which  the  ordinary  literature  of  the  race 
can  see  and  can  limn  only  on  one  side? 
The  Bible  stereoscopes  great  facts  of  hu- 
man experience.  Where  the  history,  the 
philosophy,  or  the  poetry,  of  merely  earthly 
origin  can  afford  us  but  only  the  one  side 
of  an  incident  or  character,  and  draws 
thus  but  a  dead  and  flat  sketch,  God's  in- 
spired messengers   present  us  the  two  as- 


64  -  THE   LOST   SON. 

pects — the  side  that  man  surveys,  and  the 
side  that  angels  and  God  behold.  Thus  de- 
picted, the  portraiture  catches  an  inimitable 
reality  and  prominence.  When  the  woman 
that  had  been  a  sinner  stole  her  trembling 
way,  uninvited  and  unheralded,  into  the 
house  of  Simon  to  wipe  the  feet  of  his  Di- 
vine Guest,  it  seemed  on  the  human  side,  as 
the  host  and  his  friends  regarded  it,  the 
unwarranted  intrusion  of  a  disreputable 
stranger  giving  very  questionable  honors 
that  compromised  and  tarnished  the  Re- 
ceiver. As  the  angels  of  God  beheld  it, 
there  was  a  penitent  renouncing  sin,  and 
absolved  of  the  God  whose  pardon  can  re- 
mit the  offence  as  His  grace  can  renew  the 
offender. 

When  the  dwarfish  Zaccheus  climbed  the 
tree,  to  gaze  over  the  heads  of  a  wonder- 
loving  and  tumultuous  throng  at  the  illus- 
trious Prophet  of  Nazareth,  it  seemed  to 
neighbors,  and  it  may  be  to  apostles,  only 
the  curiosity  of  one  whose  interest  in  Christ 
was  likely  to  do  himself  little  good,  and  to 


THE   LOST   SON.  65 

do  the  Master  little  service,  belonging,  as 
the  eager  gazer  did,  to  a  class  generally, 
and  not  without  reason,  disliked  of  the  Jew- 
ish people,  —  the  tax-gatherers,  not  very 
scrupulous  as  to  means  of  levying,  and  not 
very  exact  and  honest  as  to  amounts  report- 
ed at  the  treasury,  of  a  tax  laid  by  heathen 
conquerors  upon  the  proud  and  chafed  and 
bigoted  Hebrew  people.  But  to  the  Mas- 
ter's own  eyes,  it  was  salvation  coming 
home,  that  day  and  in  that  wild  gathering, 
to  the  house  and  the  heart  of  Zaccheus ;  it 
was  another  trophy  snatched  for  Heaven ; 
another  channel  hewn  for  the  gospel's  free 
currents  over  the  world.  What  a  new  view 
of  life  might  we  have  if  we  would  but,  be- 
side the  world's  view  and  hasty  superficial 
sketch  of  it,  take  out  of  Scripture  the  juster 
and  far  different  view  and  judgment  of  it  as 
it  appears  unto  Him  who  seeth  not  as  man 
seeth — if  we  would  let  the  Bible  stereoscope, 
so  to  speak,  all  our  estimates  of  character 
and  duty,  of  trial  and  temptation,  by  casting 
them  before  us  under  the  twofold  light,  as 


^  THE   LOST   SON. 

man  sees  and  as  angels  see  them.  How 
would  trifles  shrink  from  the  world's  exag- 
geration of  their  size,  and  grow  pale  and 
dim,  spite  of  the  world's  elaborate  painting 
of  them  with  tinsel  and  borrowed  hues,  if 
we  would  but  let  in  upon  them  the  light  of 
another  world,  and  the  strong  glare  of  the 
judgment  day.  So  did  Moses  turn  from  the 
splendors  of  a  flattering,  and  from  the  ter- 
rors of  a  menacing,  court,  and  find  all  dead- 
ened down  in  tone  and  dwarfed  into  insig- 
nificance as  to  size,  under  the  calm  and  aw- 
ful light  of  a  higher  sovereignty  and  an 
eternal  recompense.  He  endured,  as  seeing 
Him  who  is  invisible ;  and  feared  not  the 
wrath  of  the  king.  So  martyrs,  threatened 
with  death,  but  solicited  by  the  proffer  of  a 
resurrection  from  the  peril  of  a  yawning 
tomb,  if  they  would  only  consent  to  sin,  if 
they  would  simply  offer  incense  —  a  pinch 
of  it — to  an  idol,  rise  superior  to  intimida- 
tion and  blind  to  allurement,  by  looking  to 
a  better  resurrection — aye — a  far  better  than 
the  world  could  promise — even  the  escape 


THE   LOST   SON,  6/ 

of  the  soul  to  God  and  the  recovery  of  the 
tortured  and  mangled  body,  in  the  day  of 
the  opened  grav^e  and  the  opened  dooms- 
day book,  then  to  be  a  deathless  and  pain- 
less and  glorious  body,  a  glorified  taberna- 
cle, ever  the  home  of  a  sanctified  and  im- 
mortal and  untempted  spirit. 

So  our  Saviour,  in  those  parables  of  which 
we  now  would  scan  the  third  and  last,  meets 
the  cavils  of  His  enemies  against  His  kind- 
ness towards  publicans  and  sinners,  by  bring- 
ing in, — upon  the  partial  and  limited  view 
which  His  accusers  had  of  the  Saviour  and 
His  penitent  listeners — the  light  in  which 
angels  and  the  God  of  angels  looked  upon 
these  same  lost  ones,  whom  these  Pharisees 
so  denounced,  and  upon  the  penitence  and 
recovery,  which  these  Pharisees  deemed  so 
questionable  as  to  sincerity,  and  which  they 
judged,  if  sincere,  so  certainly  and  so  utter- 
ly insignificant  as  to  influence.  When  the 
lights  of  earth  on  the  one  side,  and  the  lights 
of  heaven  on  the  other  side,  fall  thus  on  one 
and  the  same  incident  or  character,  what  a 


68  THE   LOST   SON. 

new  reality  does  it  put  on.  We  are  verita- 
bly and  reall}' — each  one  of  us — not  what 
we  judge  ourselves,  or  as  we  seem  to  our 
erring  fellow  man — fallible  and  precipitate 
— partial  in  his  over-friendliness,  it  may  be, 
or  prejudiced  in  his  animosity.  But  we  are 
intrinsically  and  really  as  we  seem  to  the 
eyes  of  another  order  of  beings — to  holy 
angels  and  the  God  of  angels.  We  are 
what  Christ  the  judge  sees  us  as  being — ■ 
nothing  more,  nothing  less.  An  English 
statesman  spoke  of  merely  titular  nobility 
as  "  the  accident  of  an  accident."  Beings 
of  a  higher  world  regard  man  as  the  crea- 
ture and  the  charge  of  God,  the  denizen  of 
eternity.  To  them,  the  true  sorrow  for  sin, 
and  the  consequent  welcome  of  the  Redeem- 
er, displayed  in  the  case  of  earth's  vilest 
rebel,  and  lowliest  and  leas^  intelligent 
transgressor,  are  causes  of  joy.  The  morn- 
ing stars,  who  shouted  over  our  earth's 
creation  as  over  a  new  exhibition  of  their 
Maker's  glory,  do,  this  very  Sabbath,  won- 
der, and  blaze,  and  warble  out  new  ecstasies 


THE   LOST   SON.  69 

of  adoration,  as  they  see  the  greater  achieve- 
ments of  the  Redeemer  and  the  Renewer,  in 
the  conversion  of  but  one  sinner  from  the 
error  of  his  ways.  Why  not  you,  that  con- 
verted one  :  the  receiver,  yourself  of  a  free 
pardon ;  the  theme,  yourself,  of  a  celestial 
anthem  ?  To  us,  the  victor's  palm,  and  the 
capitalist's  revenues,  and  the  poet's  laurel, 
and  the  crown  of  empire,  show  like  realities. 
To  them,  the  realities  are  God's  smile,  or 
God's  ban — heaven  or  hell — souls  in  their 
apostacy — souls  in  their  recovery — souls  in 
their  communion  with  God — or  souls  self- 
banished  from  God  to  an  irremediable  sin 
and  an  unreturning  exile.  Let  us  implore 
from  God's  Spirit  aid  aright  to  ponder,  on 
God's  pages,  the  lessons  of  this  new  light, 
bringing  into  solemn  prominence  and  sa- 
lient distinctness,  the  facts  of  our  desti- 
ny and  our  interest — our  danger  for  both 
worlds,  and  our  duty  for  all  time  and  for  all 
eternity. 

I.  As  to  the  order  and  connection,  then, 
of  the  three  parables,  does  it  not  seem  as  if 


70  THE   LOST   SON. 

they  were  iatended — the  Lost  Sheep,  the 
Lost  Coin,  and  the  Lost  Son — to  present  the 
great  scheme  and  fact  of  human  salvation 
as  it  lies  in  the  Divine  Mind  ?  Consistently 
with  Divine  Equity  and  with  the  faithful- 
ness of  the  holy  law  which  man  has  broken, 
God  cannot  be  the  Father  of  a  lost  race  un- 
til His  Divine  Law,  which  man  has  tram- 
pled under  foot,  be  magnified  and  made 
honorable.  He  must  be  "Just" — just  to 
Himself — just  to  His  angels — just  to  the 
unfallen  tenantry  of  other  worlds  before  He 
can  be  "the  Justifier"  of  him,  the  peni- 
tent and  returning  prodigal,  who  believes 
in  Jesus.  The  Redemption  precedes  the 
Renovation. 

The  Shepherd  seeking  his  estrayed  sheep, 
must  be  reminding  us  of  the  Divine  Speak- 
er of  the  parable,  when  elsewhere  He  de- 
nominates Himself,  the  Good  Shepherd  lay- 
ing down  His  Hfe  for  the  sheep.  Does  not 
this  first  parable  bring  forward  that  atoning 
sacrifice  of  the  Son,  provided  in  Heaven, 
and  demanded  by  the  Law  and  the  Nature 


THE   LOST  SON.  J I 

of  God,  as  the  prerequisite  for  man's  recov- 
ery and  forgiveness? 

Then,  on  this  redemption  go  forth,  in  the 
second  parable,  the  Providence  of  God,  and 
the  Spirit  of  God,  and  the  Revelation  of 
God,  as  the  lamp  and  besom  and  the  dili- 
gent search  of  the  housewife,  recovering 
the  lost  coin  ;  and  bringing  and  enabling  the 
soul  of  man,  to  see  the  danger  of  its  condi- 
tion by  sin,  and  its  need  of  the  gracious 
provisions  of  the  Great  Atonement.  But, 
whilst  man  is  dependent  on  God's  Spirit  for 
each  good  thought,  he  is  not  saved  in  inert 
carelessness,  and  in  utter  apathy  and  inac- 
tion. He  is  turned  of  God ;  but  he  turns 
himself,  when  thus  turned  of  the  Good 
Spirit.  If  quickened,  he  is  converted  ;  and 
repents  and  considers  his  ways,  and  sets  his 
face  toward  a  forsaken  home  and  an  out- 
raged Father.  Then  comes  to  the  soul  thus 
seeking  and  self-  destroyed,  the  thought : 
Will  God  receive,  and  can  the  Holy  ac- 
cept so  worthless  a  petitioner?  And  to  the 
soul  of  man,  thus  awakened  and  humbled, 


72  THE   LOST   SON. 

distressed  in  its  self-accusations,  and  per- 
plexed as  to  its  possible  disenthralment, 
how  docs  this  closing  parable  of  the  three 
address  its  consolations.  You  are  unwor- 
thy, but  you  are  the  sought  and  the  wel- 
comed of  a  most  loving  and  generous  and 
placable  Father.  You  cannot  so  yearn  to 
return,  as  He  longs  to 'welcome  your  re- 
turn. 

II.  Let  us  dwell  next  on  the  affecting 
picture  of  man's  apostacy,  and  of  man's 
return,  and  of  God's  acceptance,  and  of 
man's  mistakings  and  mislikings  as  to  that 
acceptance. 

It  is  a  tender  and  opulent  parent.  His 
sons,  housed  and  trained  under  his  eye, 
have  not  requited  aright  the  father's  love 
and  bounty.  The  younger  cries.  Give  me 
"  my  portion  that  falleth  to  me."  Was 
it  his  right  that  he  asks  it  thus  ?  Till 
the  father  died,  was  there  any  "  falling  to 
him  ?"  Had  the  parent  needed  the  rough 
hint,  that  he  had  lived  too  long,  and  now 
lagged  a  supernumerary  and  incumbrance 


THE   LOST   SON.  73 

on  life's  stage  ?  The  father,  even  to  a  plea 
so  rude  and  unfilial,  yet  responds.  It  is — 
alas — the  daily,  hourly  appeal  of  man  to  his 
Maker.  We  want  our  share,  as  we  think 
it,  of  earth  and  happiness,  away  from 
God ;  and  in  some  imaginary  but  impossi- 
ble independence  of  Him.  You  have  your 
own  scheme  of  happiness ;  and,  though 
God's  creature,  stalking  over  His  earth, 
and  inhaling  with  each  new  respiration, 
His  air — the  eye  seeing  by  His  light,  and 
the  ear  hearing  by  the  vibration  of  His 
atmosphere,  upon  your  bodily  organs  of 
His  wise  framing  ; — each  returning  Spring, 
with  its  starting  buds  and  shooting  grasses, 
with  its  fields  again  green,  and  its  skies 
again  blue,  but  a  new  loan  from  his  unstint- 
ed, untiring,  unconstrained  generosity ; — a 
loan,  not  a  debt  from  Him — all  that  you 
have,  all  that  you  are,  and  all  that  you  hope, 
but  His  handiwork  and  His  loan,  you  seem 
to  suppose  it  must  be  ''  given"  you,  as  if  to 
enjoy  it  for  yourself,  apart  from  the  Author 
of  it  all.  Why  is  this  ?  By  what  right 
7 


74  THE    LOST   SON. 

make  you  such  a  claim  on  God  ?  By  what 
shadow  of  reason,  can  you  defend  the  feasi- 
bleness of  a  happiness  apart  from  Him  ? 
But  be  this  as  it  will.  It  is  given.  God 
allows  you  the  use  of  your  liberty  though 
it  be  misimproved,  to  your  own  injury  and 
His  dishonor.  The  portion  is  gathered,  to 
be  carried  afar  from  and  to  be  enjoyed  out 
of  the  sight  of  its  parental  Earner  and  Be- 
stower.  Follow  the  young  adventurer  to  his 
far  land.  He  is  now  shaken  loose  of  the  old 
restraints ;  and  hurls  off  the  old  fetters  of  a 
father's  lessons  and  Sabbath  training,  and 
wipes  away  all  a  mother's  prayerful  tears 
and  nursery  traditions.  The  old  family  Bi- 
ble shall  not  pester  him.  Sabbaths  shall  not 
hamper  his  free,  proud  movements.  Now, 
for  the  swing  of  the  free  passions  ;  for  gaiety 
and  license  and  self-will.  But,  along  with 
the  new  riot  of  an  imaginary  and  willful 
freedom,  the  happiness  does  not  come. 
Strangers  aid  the  prodigal,  by  interested 
flatteries,  to  wing  his  treasures,  and  seize 
his  long-coveted  goal  of  self-indulgence  and 


THE   LOST   SON.  75 

earthliness.  The  reveller,  in  his  cups  ;  the 
skeptic,  in  his  cavillings ;  gets  loose  of 
God's  curbs  of  conscience  and  scripture 
and  early  training.  But  somehow,  the  por- 
tion of  time  and  means  and  strength  allotted 
the  reveller,  is  fast  spent.  The  life  fleets 
by — the  powers  now  flag  and  fail,  and  the 
shadows  fall  and  the  amusements  grow  vap- 
id. The  wine  has  run  to  lees ;  th'e  varnish 
and  paint  scale  off  the  gaudy  scenes  of  the 
world's  glittering  drama.  Like  the  dying 
Chesterfield,  he  complains  that  he  has  been 
behind  the  scenes,  and  has  seen  the  dirty 
pulleys  and  daubed  canvas  of  the  world's 
paltry  spectacles.  He  is  disenchanted.  But, 
in  the  failure  of  his  old  illusions,  the  prodi- 
gal is  far  from  God  ;  but  not  nearer  thereby 
to  any  true  friend,  or  true  home,  in  the 
land  of  his  exile.  Suddenly  he  finds  that 
he  is  poor  and  in  want.  But  his  want  is 
obstinate  and  his  poverty  is  proud.  He 
will  not  gratify  the  old  instructors  of  his 
childhood  by  owning  a  mistake.  Not  He. 
He  will  not  ask  a  Father's  pity  or  forgive- 


76  THE   LOST   SON. 

ness.  He  will  rather  keep  his  complaints 
from  a  father's  knowledge,  and  seek  the  ser- 
vice of  strangers  ;  as  he  has  coveted  happi- 
ness in  the  society  and  boon  companion- 
ship of  aliens.  But,  instead  of  sympathy, 
he  finds  the  shrugged  shoulder,  and  the  dis- 
tant bow,  and  the  unrecognizing  stare. 
When  he  appeals  for  help,  he  is  sent  to  me- 
nial work  and  a  starving  stipend.  He  must 
go  into  the  fields  to  feed  swine ;  he  yearns 
for  their  food ;  and,  seeing  his  hungry 
glances,  and  wan  cheeks,  his  step  that  has 
lost  its  elasticity,  and  his  cowed  air,  none 
of  his  old  mates,  who  had  drained  the 
veins  of  his  prosperity,  like  the  hungry 
leech,  choose  to  waste  a  thought,  or  turn 
aside  from  their  new  revels  and  new  dupes, 
to  bestow  a  tear  on  the  poor  unthrifty  out- 
cast, whom  they  had  aided  to  beggar,  and 
whom  they  now  combine  to  disavow.  The 
old  story — is  it  not — of  the  world's  large 
welcome  of  the  prosperous,  and  quick  de- 
sertion of  the  wretched  ?  Plaudits  for  the 
man  of  the  full  purse,  if  its  strings  are  held 


THE   LOST   SON,  y-J 

but  loosely  tied  ;  and  sharp  criticisms  and 
speedy  disavowal  of  the  man  whose  purse 
had  been  rapidly  emptied  or  cunningly 
stolen.  You  go  to  the  world  for  happiness. 
Long  as  you  can  seem  to  give  it  to  the 
world,  they  will  live  on  you.  But  you  be- 
come discontented  and  sad ;  and  then  the 
world  ships  you  off  to  her  Botany  Bay  of 
the  foiled  and  the  baffled  and  the  disap- 
pointed. In  his  sorrow,  the  prodigal  comes 
to  himself.  His  superiority  to  his  father's 
grave  lessons,  and  his  impatience  of  the  re- 
straints of  the  home,  and  his  preference  for 
the  far  land  and  the  wild  revel ;  all  were,  as 
he  now  sees,  not  merely  follies  but  sins,  the 
sheerest  blunders  and  the  saddest  insults 
and  wrongs.  How  many  hired  servants  of 
his  father — men  who  had  less  religious 
knowledge  than  himself,  are  now,  in  true 
peace,  far  superior  to  him.  Men  who  were 
idolaters  and  cannibals,  in  the  time  of  his 
being  a  Sabbath  -  school  child,  are  now, 
thanks  to  God's  grace,  true  Christian  wor- 
shippers ;  and  he  is  a  sad,  forlorn,  hopeless, 

r 


78  THE   LOST   SON. 

wanderer.  The  estrangement  from  God, 
and  escape  from  the  Sanctviary  and  Sabbath 
of  his  youthful  training,  had  not  left  him  as 
happy,  even  as  much  so  as  less  favored  men 
in  endowment,  in  privilege,  in  station,  the 
mere  servants  of  his  ancestral  household. 
They  have  enough.  He  is  in  pinching  want. 
And,  coming  to  himself,  he  will  no  longer 
stay  by  himself.  He  who  had  trusted  in 
self  and  the  world — who  had  said  to  the 
Father:  "Give  me  mine,"  and  had  said  to 
the  strangers :  "  Help  me  spend  what  is 
mine,"  now  will  turn  his  back  on  his  fatal 
choice  and  his  recent  associates.  How  his 
father  may  treat  his  confessions  is  doubtful. 
But  they  are  due  to  justice  and  to  truth  ; 
and  he  will  make  the  attempt.  He  comes 
in  shame,  and  in  rags.  But  he  is  descried 
afar.  Does  his  father  send  one  of  his  low- 
est retainers,  to  warn  off  the  bounds  of  the 
estate  the  prodigal,  who  had  so  disgraced 
his  house  and  kin  ?  Is  he  bidden  to  forbear 
poisoning  with  his  leprous  rags,  the  air  of 
the  mansion  of  which  he  was  so  unworthv  ? 


THE  LOST   SON.  79 

No,  he  is  descried,  to  be  pitied.  The  fa- 
ther does  not  excuse  himself  for  inaction ; 
but  runs  to  meet  and  welcome  him.  His 
confessions  are  broken  off  by  his  father's 
frank  forgiveness.  That  father  runs  to 
meet  his  child  when  yet  "a  great  way  off;" 
and  falling  on  his  neck,  embraces  him. 
The  child  would  have  fallen  at  the  parent's 
feet.  The  father  forbids  it,  and  clasps  his 
son's  neck.  He  bids  bring  out  the  best 
robe,  and  slay  and  dress  the  stalled  calf;  he 
puts  the  shoes  on  those  bared  feet  lately  so 
bemired,  and  the  ring  on  the  brown  hands 
of  the  poor  forlorn  penitent ;  and  the  feast 
begins,  without  waiting  the  return  of  the 
brother,  as  yet  busied  in  some  distant  por- 
tion of  the  estate.  That  brother  is  startled 
on  his  homeward  way  at  the  sights  and 
sounds  of  some  strange  rejoicing.  He 
will  not  rush  in,  well  assured  though  he 
might  be,  that  his  wise  and  good  father 
could  have  no  such  festival  days  without 
some  good  cause — without  some  new  felici- 
ty, that  he,  like  his  father,  should  at  once 


8o  THE   LOST   SON. 

exult  over.  He  beckons  a  servant  to  be  his 
informant.  Instead  of  sharing  and  helping 
the  father's  generous  welcome,  and  adding 
a  brother's  greeting  and  a  brother's  tears  to 
the  glad  return  of  the  exile  and  the  attesta- 
tions of  paternal  tenderness,  he  is  discon- 
tented and  will  not  enter.  The  father 
comes  out.  Insulting  his  parent,  this  un- 
natural and  envious  man,  speaks  of  the  joy 
as  unjust  to  himself.  The  return  he  talks 
of,  not  as  a  return  home,  but  as  a  "  coming," 
as  if  it  were  unwarranted,  and  should,  of 
right,  have  been  barred  and  disallowed — a 
mere  visit,  meant  to  sponge  afresh  on  a  lib- 
erality already  abused  and  a  tenderness  that 
had  been  vilely  dishonored.  He  speaks  of 
the  new  comer  as  "  thy  son,"  not  recogniz- 
ing that  he  was  as  really  "  my  brother." 
He  recalls  not  the  prodigal's  sorrows  and 
his  amendment  and  his  humiliation,  but  his 
sins  only  ;  and  he  paints,  in  envy  and  in 
self-esteem,  his  own  comparative  merits. 
He  had  no  paltry  kid,  though  he  would 
have  used  it  with  respectable  friends — men 


THE   LOST   SON.  8 1 

all  in  good  repute,  orderly  and  cosy  and 
moral  tax  -  payers.  This  outcast  had  the 
fatted  calf,  though  his  past  waste  had  been 
with  "  harlots."  But  the  father  responds 
by  the  touching  remark.  Was  the  elder 
brother's  stay  with  himself,  a  mere  separa- 
tion from  all  "  friends  ?"  Was  he,  the  father, 
then  no  "friend"  of  the  elder  son?  Had 
he  not,  in  the  father's  presence,  and  in  the 
father's  society,  all  things  as  "his  own?" 
Did  the  feast  and  the  welcome  really  confer 
— if  he  were  but  right-minded — more  pleas- 
ure on  his  parent,  than  they  ought  to  have 
done  on  himself — a  son  and  a  brother? 
Had  not  the  younger  child,  of  the  same 
hearth-stone  and  roof-tree,  been  dead ;  was 
he  not  alive  again  ?  Had  he  not  been  lost ; 
was  he  not  found  ?  Was  it  natural,  manly, 
filial,  fraternal,  thus  to  scowl  on  Redemp- 
tion from  Hell :  and  make  his  growlings  of 
selfish  envy  the  under-base  of  the  melodi- 
ous anthems  of  glad  angels  over  a  new  res- 
cue from  Abaddon  and  a  new  trophy  for 
Heaven? 


82  THE   LOST   SON. 

III.  And  now,  let  us  see  the  application 
of  this  most  simple  and  yet  profound  of 
parables.  How  did  it  show  the  Pharisees, 
tenderly,  yet  keenly,  the  unworthiness  of 
their  discontent  at  the  conversion  of  sin- 
ners. What  right  had  they,  as  true  sons 
and  as  true  brothers,  to  remain  thus  strange 
to  the  joys  of  the  loving  and  the  Holy 
Jehovah,  and  have  thus  no  response,  no  ear, 
no  tolerance  for  the  anthems  and  gratula- 
tions  of  all  His  holy  and  heavenly  worship- 
pers, over  the  conversion  and  recovery  of 
the  estrayed  and  the  self- destroyed,  now 
brought  happily  and  forever  back  ?  When 
the  Pharisees  heard  of  the  ninety  and  nine 
sheep  that  had  not  wandered,  the  ninety 
and  nine  just  men  needing  no  repentance, 
how  readily  they  appropriated  the  character 
as  their  own.  When  they  listened  to  the  par- 
able of  the  lost  coin,  how  they  congratulated 
themselves,  as  bright  medals  that  had  never 
rolled  from  the  meshes  of  the  Law's  purse, 
and  never  stooped  to  the  sinner's  I'ow  plane 
of  contamination,  tumbled   and  mired  up- 


THE   LOST   SON,  83 

on  the  soil.  But  when  the  prodigal  was 
painted  in  his  excess,  how  did  their  self- 
righteousness  take  new  honors  to  itself,  in 
the  thought  of  their  own  lofty  escape  from 
all  such  prodigal  vanities  and  vagabond  ex- 
cesses and  disreputable  intemperance  !  But 
when  came,  at  last,  the  elder  brother's  irrev- 
erence to  the  father,  and  unnatural  harsh- 
ness to  his  misguided  junior,  all  this  jars 
unpleasantly  on  them.  It  was  a  mirror, 
that  showed  them,  so  faithfully  and  yet  so 
delicately,  their  own  stolid  selfishness,  and 
their  sullen  alienation  from  God's  delight 
over  the  recovery  of  the  lost,  and  from 
God's  joy  in  the  redemption  of  the  self-de- 
stroyed. 

You  look  at  the  Ragged  School,  with  its 
noise  and  unseemly  sights  and  unfragrant 
steams.  You  hear  of  the  misery  and  vice, 
it  may  be,  of  parents  and  homes  from  which 
these  children  have  come.  You  read  of 
cannibals,  devouring  their  missionary  guests. 
It  is  hard,  is  it  not,  but  is  it  not  also  blessed, 
to  bring  in  the  other  aspect,  and  the  stereo- 


84  THE   LOST   SON. 

scopic  view,  of  angels  exultant  over  light 
shed  into  earth's  dark  nooks,  and  over  souls 
snatched  out  of  the  miry  clay  of  earth's  fetid 
pools,  to  shine  ultimately  in  the  Redeemer's 
diadem  ? 

Let  each  say  to  himself:  Thou,  my  soul, 
art  the  prodigal.  Like  him,  hast  thou  wan- 
dered far;  and,  like  him,  hast  thou  wasted 
much ;  and,  like  him,  hast  thou  sunk  low. 
Even  thus,  hast  not  thou  wandered  from  the 
innocence  of  childhood,  and  from  the  high 
aspirations  of  thy  ingenuous  youth,  to  earth- 
liness  and  selfishness  —  from  God's  law,  to 
thy  own  mad  will  ?  Hast  thou  not  wasted 
much  ?  not  merely  of  property,  for  frivolous 
and  unworthy  objects  and  for  idlest  self-in- 
dulgence, but  of  that,  which  is  more  valuable 
than  riches,  influence  and  talent  and  oppor- 
tunity— the  warnings  of  conscience  and  the 
teachings  of  the  sanctuary  and  the  lessons 
of  the  Spirit  ?  Hast  thou  not  sunk  low  ? 
Exalted  above  the  beast  and  bird  in  intelli- 
gence, in  the  possession  of  conscience  and 
in  the  anticipations  of  eternity,  hast  thou 


THE   LOST   SON.  8$ 

not  too  often  been  the  inferior  of  these  less 
highly  endowed  creatures,  less  true  to  thy 
God  than  these  are  to  their  own  narrower 
instincts  ?  The  ox  knoweth  his  owner  and 
the  ass  his  master's  crib ;  but  Israel,  reared 
on  miracles,  and  pampered  with  divine 
revelations — Israel  knoweth  not  its  Feeder, 
its  Master,  its  untiring,  ungrudging  Bene- 
factor. Is  not  this  a  degradation,  stolid- 
ity, and  brutality — more  than  animal,  lower 
than  mere  brutishness  ?  But,  ingratitude  to 
an  Incarnate  Redeemer,  what  can  be  so 
monstrous  as  this  ? 

But  gazing  through  the  parables,  and 
across  the  sufferings  of  our  Lord  and 
Saviour,  into  the  heart  of  God  thus  laid 
bare,  what  cause  of  adoring  gratitude  and 
wonder  have  we  in  the  pledged  readiness  of 
God  to  meet  and  to  pardon  the  self-accusing, 
self-destroyed  sinner !  The  new  and  over- 
whelming view  of  our  folly  and  demerit ; 
the  juster  sense  than  was  ever  before  attain- 
ed of  our  own  provocations,  of  the  bright- 
ness of  the  Divine  Holiness,  of  the  excellent 


86  THE   LOST   SON. 

righteousness  of  the  Divine  Law,  and  of  the 
glory  of  the  salvation  long  spurned,  seems 
now  to  make  our  offences  hopeless  of  for- 
giveness. But  look  up,  through  the  mist 
and  storm  of  self-reproach  to  the  Father, 
as  these  parables  paint  Him,  and  see,  in  the 
errand  of  the  Ransoming  Son,  and  of  the 
Convincing,  Converting  Spirit,  the  incred- 
ible and  surpassing  goodness  of  the  Father. 
Ready  is  the  Fatherhood  of  God,  waiting 
even  now,  and  waiting  for  thee,  the  sinner, 
in  thy  past  follies,  in  all  thy  sad  requital  of 
His  tenderness  and  bounty.  Cast  not  away 
the  salutary  humiliations  and  warnings. 
Put  not  from  thee  the  parental  invitations, 
and  the  fraternal  entreaties  of  thy  Saviour 
and  God.  Low  as  may  have  been  thy  grov- 
elling, and  great  and  lavish  as  has  been  thy 
wasting,  and  far  as  has  been  thy  wandering, 
all  Heaven  adjures  thee  to  turn,  and  waits, 
intently,  thy  acceptance  of  the  gracious 
overture.  Turn  and  live.  Retrace  the 
steps  of  estrangement,  and  renounce  the 
ways  of  folly  and  sin.     If  man,  thy  brother, 


THE   LOST   SON.  87 

distrust  thee,  do  not  thou  distrust  the  Com- 
mon Father,  Let  the  scowl  of  the  Pharisee 
be,  for  thee,  drowned  in  the  beaming,  trans- 
forming smile  of  thy  Father  in  Heaven. 
Christ,  thine  Elder  Brother — not  like  him  of 
the  parable,  an  accuser  against  thee,  but  an 
Advocate  for  thee — welcomes  thee  with  an 
eager  generosity,  and  pursues  thy  distrust- 
ful estrangement  with  bounty  the  most 
lavish,  and  invitations  most  cordial  and  en- 
dearing, and  adjurations  most  solemn  and 
importunate.  Wisdom  wrote  for  thee  the 
scriptures,  and  indited  for  thee  the  parable, 
and  urges  on  thy  heart  the  promises. 

How  needful,  amid  the  trials  of  this 
earthly  life,  and  how  blessed  is  it  to  look 
off  from  the  low  plane  and  past  the  near 
horizon  of  Earth  and  Time,  to  the  higher, 
wider  Heavens,  with  their  juster  standards, 
and  clearer  lights,  and  unsetting  glories, 
that  thus  we  may  learn  to  judge  aright  of 
the  events  around  us,  and  of  the  influences 
that  are  passing  over  us.  Earthly  trial, 
however  sharp  and  however  long,  is    not 


88  THE   LOST   SON. 

hopeless,  or  endless,  or  even  aimless,  if  ac- 
cepted as  the  appointment  of  a  parental 
Providence,  and  as  training  and  meetening 
us  for  rest  in  Jesus.  And  earthly  splendors 
and  lures  grow  tame  and  despicable,  when, 
from  the  side-lights  of  scripture,  we  learn 
to  acknowledge  what  baits  they  often  are 
and  what  fates  they  often  work  out.  Who 
would  envy  the  pomp  and  girding  flatterers 
of  Herod,  as  the  worm  is  seen  already  com- 
missioned to  smite  the  deified  orator?  Who 
would  yearn  to  change  lots  with  the  daugh- 
ter of  Herodias,  in  her  grace  and  her 
princely  home,  when  the  prophet's  head  is 
seen  as  the  price  of  her  fascinations,  and  the 
ghastly  trophy  of  youth,  beauty  and  rank  ? 
Who  would  adopt,  and  iterate  as  their  own, 
the  wail  of  Jacob  or  of  the  afflicted  Job 
over  all  things  as  against  them,  whilst  see- 
ing, in  scripture,  "the  end  of  the  Lord" 
in  the  trials  thus  deplored  and  despaired 
over  ? 

Blessed,  indeed,  is  his  lot,  however  ob- 
scure and  unfriendly  as  to  man  it  may  seem, 


THE   LOST   SON.  89 

over  whom,  regenerate,  loving  and  grateful, 
is  heard  the  Father's  assurance :  All  things 
are  yours.  All  things  shall  work  together 
for  thy  good.  Nothing  shall  be  able  to 
separate  thee  from  the  love  of  God  which 
is  in  Christ  Jesus.  The  earth,  with  all  its 
adornments,  treasures  and  privileges,  may 
well  be  dear,  as  thy  Father's  work,  and  as 
one  of  the  outlying  fields  to  His  heavenly 
home.  But  in  addition  to  a  share  of  His 
bounties  here,  there  awaits  thee  a  better 
portion  hereafter  and  in  the  world  beyond 
this.  If  even  now,  in  those  fields  of  light 
and  peace,  there  is  joy  over  one  penitent 
yet  trembling  and  tempted  and  imperfect 
on  the  earth,  what,  as  we  may  well  believe, 
shall  not  be  the  mounting  stages  of  a  higher 
exultation  over  a  human  spirit  fully  enfran- 
chised and  finally  glorified  ?  What  must 
be  the  greetings  of  the  Church  beyond  the 
judgment-day — the  gratulations  of  the  Zion 
of  God  all  complete  in  number  and  rich  in 
the  mature  and  symmetrical  grace  that  has 
culminated   in   eternal  glory.      Beside  the 


90  THE   LOST   SON. 

River  of  Life,  before  the  throne,  beneath  the 
splendors  of  the  celestial  and  endless  Sabbath 
in  that  city  of  God,  whose  residents  go  out 
no  more  for  ever.  To  such  a  rest  the  prodi- 
gals of  earth  are  bidden  to  aspire — the  be- 
liever is  destined  assuredly  to  ascend.  The 
sinners  of  this  dark  world,  forlorn,  self-im- 
poverished, self-banished,  are  called  to  look 
up  from  their  remote  exile,  from  the  heaps 
of  unsatisfying  husks  littered  around  them, 
to  this  upper  scene  of  victory  and  gladness 
and  cloudless  light  —  the  true  "  Father's 
house  of  many  mansions."  "  A  threefold 
cord,"  said  the  wise  man,  "is  not  easily 
broken."  And  when  our  days  here  are  sad 
and  few,  how  blessed  the  touch,  in  faith,  of 
the  cords  of  deliverance  and  pardon,  of 
hope  and  rescue,  flung  down  into  the  dun- 
geon from  the  throne  of  the  Triune  Je- 
hovah. The  Redeeming  Son  of  God  — 
the  Renewing,  Illumining  and  Recovering 
Spirit  —  and  the  Adopting  and  Forgiving 
and  Justifying  Father  have  braided  its 
strands,  that   shall   never   part  under   any 


THE   LOST   SON.  9I 

stress  ;  and  which  pledge  a  hope  that  maketh 
not  ashamed.  Believe  in  God,  and  live  for- 
evermore.  Know  thy  Maker;  seek  the  eye, 
and  sink  in  filial  trust  on  the  heart  of  thy 
Father  on  high.  Once  restored  to  His 
favor,  and  at  peace  with  Him,  and  then 
shalt  thou  that  be  at  peace  with  thyself; 
and  His  wide  universe  shall,  finally,  be  at 
peace  with  thee,  all  things,  loyally  or  per- 
force, working  together  for  the  good  of 
them  that  love  God  and  who  are  the  called 
according  to  His  calling. 


NOTE. 

In  these  Discourses,  the  tbree  Parables  of  our  Lord 
are  regarded  as  preseuting  the  work  of  the  Son,  of  the 
Spirit,  and  of  the  Father,  in  setting  up  "the  kingdom 
of  God."  It  is  the  establishment  of  that  kingdom  in 
the  convert's  heart ;  singly,  and  apart  from  his  fellow- 
men. 

The  Apostolic  Benediction,  used  so  generally  for  all 
centuries  since  Christ's  ascension,  refers  to  that  king- 
dom on  another  side,  and  not  so  much  in  a  solitary 
worshipper,  but  as  seen  in  the  collective  body  of  con- 
verts. It  is  a  prayer  to  each  person  of  the  Divine 
Trinity  for  the  maintenance  and  expansion  of  that 
sway  of  Christ  over  the  nations,  by  means  of  Christ's 
churches.  "  The  grace  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and 
the  love  of  God,  and  the  communion  of  the  Holy  Ghost, 
be  with  you  all.  Amen."*  Here,  too,  as  in  the  para- 
bles, the  work  of  the  Atoner  stands  first;  butthejiarental 
love  of  the  Divine  Father  now  follows  in  the  second 
place,  and  to  the  third  place  is  assigned  the  energy  of 
the  Divine  Spirit,  as  maintaining  the  unity  and  bro- 
therhood of  the  Church,  cementing  and  assimilating 
the  body  of  Christ;  and  rendering  it  aggressive  and 
victorious  in  its  influence  over  the  world,  by  a  power 
of  transmutation  and  assimilation  shed  forth  upon 
them.  The  reign,  or  "  kiugdom  of  God  "  is,  in  the 
lonely  disciple,  a  recovery  to  God,  the  enlistment  of  a 

*  2  Corinthians  xiii.  14. 
(9^) 


NOTE.  93 

solitary  recruit.  In  the  assen.bly  of  Clirist's  disciples, 
that  "  kingdom  "  becomes  a  camp  of  such  recruits,  dis- 
ciplined and  summoned  to  aid  in  recovering  all  others 
-within  their  reach.  The  spirit  of  restored  fellowship 
or  "  communion  "  tcitli  Ood  is,  in  its  own  bounds,  a 
pledge  of  higher,  closer  fraternity  with  all  fellow-citi- 
zens, enhancing  tlieir  accord  and  "  communion."  And 
it  is  as  much  also  a  sjiirit  of  loving  compassion  for 
those  yet  estrayed  and  prodigal.,  and  as  yet  beyond  its 
bounds,  endeavoring  to  bring  over  the  sharers  of  a 
common  revolt  into  the  fellowship  of  a  c(mimon  hope 
in  Christ  and  into  full  heirship  in  a  paradise  which  the 
Elder  Brother  has  opened  for  converts  out  of  all  lands 
and  all  kindreds.  The  Spirit  of  God,  taking  by  Christ's 
appointment  the  place  of  Witness  on  the  removal  of 
Christ's  human  and  visible  body  from  the  earth,  stands 
last,  when  the  Apostle  is  describing  the  hopes  and 
duties  of  the  earthly  church  collectively.  The  great 
Agency,  magnified  in  the  scenes  of  Pentecost,  is  to  be 
invoked  and  to  be  relied  upon  by  the  peoj^le  of  God  for 
the  expected  glories  of  the  Millennium.  That  the  Second 
Adam  may  rally  and  restore  the  race  which  the  First 
Adam  betrayed  and  divided,  the  Paraclete  must  be 
sought,  as  the  principle  of  life  and  the  bond  of  union 
and  the  giver  of  conquest. 

But,  in  the  baptismal  form  pronounced  over  each  in- 
dividual convert,  and  enunciated  afresh  in  each  new 
admission  to  the  earthly  church,  the  names  of  the 
Divine  Trinity  ajipear  in  another  order.  In  the  mys- 
terious economy  of  the  Divine  Nature,  the  Son,  as  the 
sent  of  the  Father,  and  the  Spirit,  as  sent  forth  of  the 
Father  and  the  Son,  take  the  second  and  third  place, 
and  the  Father's  is  the  first. 


94  NOTE. 

If  these  views  be  just,  the  form  of  the  titles  of  the 
(lodhead  used  in  baptism  presents  God  as  He  is,  abso- 
hitoly  and  ajjart  from  the  Avork  of  man's  salvation.  It 
is  the  Kinp^'s  titles,  as  He  iiroclaims  them  and  His  sub- 
jects avouch  them.  The  parables,  in  this  chapter  of 
the  evangelist  Luke,  present  that  same  Divine  Nature, 
as  manifested  for  the  restoration  of  man,  the  banished 
and  lost,  in  the  experience  of  the  individual  soul.  "With- 
out the  shedding  of  blood,  no  remission  of  sins — and 
the  Shepherd  laying  down  life  for  the  sheep;  without 
the  new  birth  or  regeneration,  no  capacity  for  the  favor 
of  God — and  the  Almighty  Sjiirit  brooding  over  the 
moral  chaos  for  a  new  creation  ;  and  the  Fatherly  love 
of  God,  first  devising  that  atonement  and  providing 
that  regeneration,  and  then  applying  such  device  and 
such  i^rovision  to  accomplish  the  adoption  and  restora- 
tion of  the  self-banished  prodigal.  An  Effectual  Call- 
ing based  on  a  prerequisite  Propitiation  and  a  prece- 
dent or  coincident  Renewal.  And  the  Apostolical  Bene- 
diction, sounded  in  so  many  t<mgues  of  the  earth  and 
through  so  many  centuries,  over  such  myriads  on  my- 
riads of  assembled  Christians,  reminds  the  whole  sacra- 
mental host  in  whose  name  it  is  that  they  set  up 
their  banners  ;  and  bids  them  ever,  in  their  plans  and 
supplications,  to  remember  that,  as  they  are  bought  in 
One  Blood,  and  are  the  called  of  One  Father,  they  need 
to  receive,  and  cherish,  and  imjjlore  One  Spirit.  By 
Him  shall  ultimately  all  earth's  discords  be  hushed. 
To  "  grieve  "  that  Spirit  of  Holiness  and  Love,  is  to 
rend  Christ's  mystic  body.  To  "  quench  "  that  Spirit 
of  Light,  Truth  and  Life,  is  to  instal  Falsehood  in  the 
chair  of  Verity,  to  bequeath  despair  to  the  world,  and 
to  work  suicide  as  against  the  Church. 


NOTE.  95 

The  Trinity  is  not,  tlien,  in  the  Bible  a  mere  specu- 
lative mystery,  too  recondite  to  be  practical.  As  a  doc- 
trine, each  disciple  avouches  it  on  the  church  threshold. 
As  an  experience,  it  underlies  the  conversion  of  the 
individual.  As  a  life,  it  pervades  the  collective  churches 
through  all  lands  and  all  ages.  It  is  at  once,  badge, 
history  and  banner.  A  badge,  in  baptism  ;  a  history, 
as  to  the  ransom,  regeneration,  and  filial  adoption  of 
each  separate  disciple ;  and  a  banner,  as  to  the  array 
and  prospects  of  Christ's  collected  disciples,  moving 
forward  as  churches  to  subdue  the  world  to  the  obe- 
dience of  the  faith.  The  Zion  of  God  welcomes  each 
neophyte  into  her  fellowship  under  this  Triune  Name, 
and  speeds  forth  each  dispersing  assembly  that  quits 
her  courts,  with  the  same  significant  invocation.  She 
greets  the  coming,  she  bids  farewell  to  the  parting 
guest,  in  the  name  of  the  Trinity, 


I 


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